Lucky Strike

He's a detective in the doghouse. She's a local journo trying to save her

iconic beach town. Together they stumble into a vicious drug war.

When a murder trial goes pear-shaped, homicide cop Marcus Luciano is suspended for bashing a defence barrister outside Sydney's Supreme Court. He flees to Noosa in an ancient Land Rover, leaving the howling media in the rearview mirror.

The reporters call him 'Lucky' Luciano because of his maverick methods and high profile 'collars'. But, to him, they are all 'hyenas'. So sparks fly on his first night in Noosa when the detective has a run-in with local newspaper editor Lynne Ross. Not helped when he calls her the 'H' word.

That said, she's smart and attractive and he's newly single, so when the journo asks Luciano to help her probe a council corruption scam, he reluctantly agrees. But then a Mexican cartel gangster washes up dead on a Noosa beach, and his detective juices really flow.

Turns out the narco was killed on a catamaran during a $360m drugs heist in the Coral Sea a week before. A federal task force investigating international drug smuggling reveals that the man had an accomplice, dubbed 'Scuba Woman' by the media. She's missing, presumed dead, after a two-word message was found scrawled in lipstick on the windscreen of the sinking vessel at Wolf Rock. 

As their mutual attraction simmers, Lucky and Lynne follow the trail of 'Scuba Woman' and the cop discovers a link between the drug heist and the council conspiracy. Various twists and turns lead the pair to a gaudy Gold Coast mansion, home of a mysterious Chinese businessman known to the task force as the 'Dragon Head'- the boss of a vicious triad. 

Mayhem ensues when the Mexican cartel sends a team of sicarios to Queensland to wreak revenge on the crims who hijacked their drug shipment. 

When Lucky is taken hostage by the triad boss, Lynne enlists the help of the task force. And, as a SWAT rescue team moves in, the peaceful streets of the quiet coastal town of Paradise Point witness an unprecedented turf war between cartel sicarios and Chinese gangsters. Or, as the tabloids dub it: BLOODBATH IN PARADISE

Lucky Stike is the first in a new series featuring DI 'Lucky' Luciano. It is a fast-paced, ripped-from-the-headlines thriller based on real themes, and written by a former top newspaper editor who has lived and worked in the UK, US, Canada, NZ and Australia. Quinn is the author of three other novels featuring Aussie investigative journalist Jonno Bligh.