The Strip by Iain Ryan

Publisher's Synopsis

When a local doctor is brutally murdered, Detective Constable Lana Cohen joins Strike Force Diablo on the notorious Gold Coast, where she finds herself navigating a world of chaos and corruption.

As she delves deeper into the case, Lana reluctantly pairs up with Henry Loch, a detective with a tarnished reputation who sees an opportunity to redeem himself amidst the mayhem.

But as Lana and Henry unravel the threads of violence and deceit, they uncover a dark side to the Gold Coast that shocks them to the core. With six unsolved murders already haunting them, will they be able to untangle the web of lies before it's too late?

My Review of The Strip by Iain Ryan

The place and time is the Gold Coast in 1980, a very troubled and troubling time for policing in Australia and Iain Ryan has tapped into that with The Strip. This is a hard bitten police procedural that plonks us down in the middle of the grime and sleaze spawned by a blooming culture of graft and corruption. This is a murder mystery that dodges and weaves through the corruption and stink, the dirty dealings and slipshod police work under the guise of a fully equipped taskforce. And it’s done brilliantly. 

A man is shot to death while out running in the border town of Tweed Heads one night. He turns out to be Brian Amstell, a doctor with a young family, and the shooting appears to be a professional job. The Queensland police quickly takes it over citing its similarity to other recent deaths that took place on their patch. This death makes the seventh murder in two years being investigated by Strike Force Diablo. None of the murders have been solved - not even nearly.

Detective Constable Lana Cohen from Sydney CIB in New South Wales has been seconded to Strike Force Diablo to help work on the Brian Amstell case and to also keep an eye on the coppers working in the team. She’s not best pleased to be spying on fellow police officers, but she is determined to get to the bottom of the Amstell case.

Detective Henry Loch is a part of Strike Force Diablo having been seconded, along with his partner Lowell Sennett, from the Gold Coast Consorting Squad. He’s very pleased to be working homicide, but is well aware that his name is already mud with his superiors and his move to Diablo is anything but a reward for effort.

On top of what should be his demanding caseload working the Amstell murder, Henry’s also asked by a local brothel madam to look out for a woman named Sarah Utton who disappeared around 6 months earlier. He agrees thinking he can fit the search in among all of his other duties / extra curricular activities.

This unlikely pairing proves to be the pivotal pieces in a serial killer investigation that is hampered on many sides by incompetence, apathy and criminality. They prove to be capable of some insightful deductive reasoning and, while by no means perfect, cut straight through much of the bull that had been shovelled before.

The deeply ingrained police corruption that’s embodied within the pages of The Strip stems from the real life events of Queensland in the 1980s and the resulting Fitzgerald Inquiry that followed. It illustrates exactly what can happen when the people charged with upholding the law are dirtier than the crims they’re supposed to be catching.

Very Australian in the language spoken and the attitudes exhibited, this is a pacy thriller that tackles a multi-layered murder investigation-cum-missing person investigation with a good degree of dexterity. Given the upheaval within the force, Lana and Henry are under incredible time pressures which creates another level of tension. Plus, the pair are also essentially ostracised from their colleagues to boot.

I loved every minute of this hardboiled Aussie page-turner. I thought it captured the essence of stink of corruption perfectly while also delivering an outstanding police procedural that managed to break a few rules along the way. A good, solid, meaty crime thriller.