Trust is book #3 (following Scrublands and Silver)of Chris Hammer’s Martin Scarsden series. If you’re not a ‘series person’, Trust is also perfectly readable as a standalone. The thing I love most about Hammer’s novels is their tightly woven, complex plotting, and book #3 did no disappoint. 

I liked him. He had a commitment to the truth. Lawyers don’t, as a rule: we just seek and reward the better argument.

When Martin listens to a phone message from his partner Mandy and hears a terrified scream, he races back to their isolated house on the hill to find her missing, and an unconscious policemen on the floor. He goes in search of Mandy and finds himself in Sydney. Meanwhile Mandy’s kidnappers reveal themselves to be violent people from a past she’s been trying to forget, and they have tentacles reaching into her and Martin’s present lives.

They didn’t live quarantined from the consequences of their actions; they could not travel unimpeded to new worlds; there was no vaccine against the past.

What ensues is a fight for survival in a plot mired in power-games, greed, corruption, privilege and fraud. Martin and Mandy must uncover the truth in order to free themselves from the past.

Trust is fast paced, action packed, Australian noir, with a dense plot that takes the reader on a roller-coaster ride. A novel for crime fiction lovers.