AustLit

'Two Melbourne TV journalists are on a well-earned holiday, travelling New Zealand in a motorhome. Will they survive a monster storm and a killer on the loose?

'Kim Prescott survived a killer's bullet in Melbourne but can't shake the PTSD. For Jo Trescowthick the trip is a chance to confront family demons. The third in the Melbourne Spotlight series finds Kim and Jo on a road trip from Auckland on the north island to the tourist mecca of Queenstown in the deep south; Rotorua mud pools, Kaikōura whale watching, the stunning Marlborough Sounds. They won't make it.

'Debt-ridden South Island fisherman and ex-con Gordie Tulloch is offered the deal of a lifetime. Is it legal? He doesn't care. All he has to do is survive the storm approaching the Shaky Isles. But Gordie's every move is under scrutiny by a man whose own secrete are about to spill into public view.

'And then of course Mother Nature has her own agenda. Cyclone Gita is on a serpentine path of destruction through the tropics that will see her smash into New Zealand.

'The cyclone, the motorhome, the fisherman, and the watcher all face an unexpected rendezvous in Kaikōura.' (Publication summary)

'A captive woman, a lover betrayed, an idealistic journalist.

'Three women - their fates strangely aligned by a killer obsessed with retribution.

'Melbourne Spotlight journalist Kim Prescott is promoted to the TV reporting staff after the program's expose of the Tugga's Mob murders in Australia and New Zealand was a ratings bonanza.

'The TV show's high profile now attracts stories.

'One anonymous tip-off will horrify the nation all over again. Despite the scandal that nearly closed the greyhound racing industry, it seems live baiting is still going on.

'The trail leads Kim and her camera crew to the Victorian gold-mining ghost town of Steiglitz. They find horrific scenes at a trainer's starting boxes - but not at all what they expect.

'Meanwhile, production assistant Jo becomes the pawn of an activist with a vendetta, testing whether her loyalty lies with him or her current affairs team.

'And, most desperate of all, hope finally flickers for a woman who scratches the record of her captivity into a cellar wall.' (Publication summary)

'In Stephen Johnson's Tugga's Mob, what happens on tour stays on tour. That was the mantra for the southern hemisphere backpackers who swarmed Europe in the 1980s. Foreign countries had to be explored and devoured in every way possible.

'Waikato-born Judy Williams worked hard for her Big OE: London, Paris, Rome, Gallipoli; and her adventures were dutifully recorded in her diary.

'A diary that also recorded how the obsessive Tugga Tancred and his Kiwi mates turned Judy’s trip of a lifetime into a nightmare of sly sexual harassment.

'Their bad behaviour went unnoticed, or was ignored by fellow passengers like Australian Andrew Hackett who chose to party hard with Tugga’s Mob.

'After all, they were in Europe for a good time, not a long time.

'And what a time it was, until Tugga’s fixation ultimately led to murder; a crime that went unpunished for 30 years.

'But few things remain hidden forever. The rediscovery of Judy’s hand-written diary’s sparks a trail of revenge that the original perpetrators never see coming, in Tugga's Mob, by Stephen Johnson.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.