MY LATEST
He’s a detective on the run after a career meltdown. She’s a local journo battling to save her town. Together, they stumble into a deadly narco nightmare.
After an explosive courtroom debacle puts his job on the line, Sydney homicide detective Marcus ‘Lucky’ Luciano races north to Noosa, leaving a media frenzy in the rearview mirror. There, he’s greeted by a breaking news story: a bullet-ridden body has washed up on a local beach.
Turns out the victim is linked to a Mexican cartel’s $350 million fentanyl shipment being smuggled into SE Queensland. When a Chinese Triad hijacks the drugs in the Coral Sea, the cartel sends a hit squad to wreak terrible revenge.
Meanwhile, Lynne Ross, editor of the local rag, uncovers something even closer to home: a shadowy Chinese billionaire is quietly buying up Noosa – its council, its mayor, its whole future. As Lucky and Lynne dig deeper, they find the two stories collide at the door of a Gold Coast mansion . . . as they risk everything to expose the terrible truth.
Lucky Strike is the first in a new series featuring Aussie cop Marcus ‘Lucky’ Luciano.
More from Terence J. Quinn
DEAD IN THE WATER*, the first in the Jonno Bligh trilogy, introduces the acclaimed investigative journalist who has acquired a cocaine habit and a nasty case of writers’ block. Under pressure to deliver his next blockbuster, Jonno sails to the Indian Ocean in The Scoop Jon B; there he takes refuge on a remote island, vowing to get clean.
But a gang of Indonesian pirates also uses the island to stash their spoils, and Jonno watches in horror as the thugs leave two abducted women to die on the beach. He rescues one, Annie Greenwood, and they flee with the pirate loot. With the vengeful killers hot on their heels, both Jonno and Annie are forced to come to terms with their own destructive demons – and a discovery that will change their lives.
* First published as ‘The Scoop’ in 2018 by Simon & Schuster Australia.
Goodreads rating: 4.2 stars
‘Quinn has created a new, engaging Aussie hero in Jonno Bligh’
Noel Whittaker, Finance Guru and author of 20 + bestselling books
Jonno Bligh is headhunted by Russian oligarch Borya Bolshakov to be editor of his flagship tabloid UK Today. Jonno and his team investigate the murders of a high-profile activist and a royal princess by jihadi terrorists.
This leads them to Bolshakov’s shady links to a murderous Russian conspiracy that reaches into the very heart of Downing Street. Jonno must decide whether to risk everything – his job, his family, his life – by publishing the truth.
Deadline, published by Simon & Schuster in 2021, is a high-octane thriller written by a former newspaper editor that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the last explosive page.
Goodreads rating: 3.89
‘This is a political thriller to match anything by John le Carré, and a window into the real, gritty world of fake news. Masterfully written, tightly plotted.’
Paul Williams, author of Don’t Tell and 12 Days
In the third instalment of the Jonno Bligh series, Mickey Marx is a British music mogul whose extravagant tastes are as obscene and outrageous as the girl bands he manages and exploits. For over three decades, the founder of the ‘Top Marx’ record label has straddled the pop industry like a Colossus. But now, facing debt and disgrace, Marx is collaborating with the mysterious Russian ‘Tsiganka’ to traffic drugs, arms and children via the dark web.
More mayhem ensues when the UK Today team discovers that an ISIS jihadi has sneaked back into Britain to assassinate the new Israeli PM during a state visit. The fast-paced Deadbeat goes behind the glitz and the glamour of the entertainment industry to rip open its seedy, shady underbelly.
My world of words . . .
“To love what you do and feel that it matters – how could anything be more fun?”
So said Katherine Graham, doyenne of the Washington Post. On that score, I won life’s lottery – building two distinct careers from a singular love of words.
It all started in the seventies when I began scribbling on a small weekly newspaper in Scotland, before going on to become editor of metro dailies in Yorkshire and Edinburgh, and then the Scottish Daily Record – in those Halcyon days, the UK’s fifth largest paper.
I loved it. Nothing beats the Porsche-like purr of a daily newsroom machine on a big news day. Here’s how I describe it in my second book Deadline:
“A tabloid is a savage beast, a nocturnal predator – lithe, muscular, slumbering gently in the early part of the day before stirring into action at dusk when it truly comes alive; a creative cauldron, fuelled by a mix of testosterone, controlled chaos and jugular journalism.”
In 1998 I headed to New York to become editorial chief of a chain of 60 dailies operating in the US and Canada. The globetrotting continued thereafter, first to NZ and then Oz in 2004.
For more than three decades, I had a box seat at domestic and global events. The Bradford Fire. Lockerbie. The Fall of the Wall. The Falklands War. Dunblane. Princess Diana. 9/11. Countless wars, murders, political scandals, cultural revolutions, and technological advances. A witness to an unending roll call of triumphs and tragedies.
When digital began supplanting print more than a decade ago, I saw the writing on the wall (pun intended), made my excuses and left. Becoming an author seemed natural. As someone told me at the time: “You tabloid guys are good at writing fiction.” Ouch!
“Write what you know,” the experts say. So, I did. During my work in news, I was lucky (or unlucky, in some cases) to meet princes and prime ministers, chief constables and crime bosses, movie stars and MI5 spooks, US senators and sporting heroes. Throw in a few prima donnas and psychopaths, and I was gifted with a lifetime of fictional fodder. Thus, many of the characters and events in my novels are based on real stuff.
The one exception is the non-fiction book – The Courage to Care (published by Connor Court) which I co-wrote in 2022/23 with my friend Suzi Smeed who is a Hungarian Holocaust survivor – her story was incredible enough without any literary embellishment.
That’s it so far – five books and counting. I’ve been lucky – words have never failed me!
