Dan Calder #01: Agency, The

- Blurb -

As a boy Dan Calder guiltily witnessed his father abuse his mother and later had to endure the near hero worship of the same man who was a senior officer in the police force he joined. Still not over his early resignation from the police in the UK Calder seeks a fresh start in New Zealand. Training for the Auckland Marathon is free therapy as well as exercise and a great diversion while he is planning what to do with his life. He still suffers recurring nightmares about his parents and the autobiography, written as another form of therapy years before sits in a drawer in Calder's office as a constant reminder. Chapter 14 is missing though, its details are his darkest moment and it remains hidden away from the rest of the manuscript. Before he has properly moved on Katrina Mallinder also arrives from England with a gruesome agenda of her own. Mallinder is a serial killer, originally driven by revenge for the untimely deaths of her parents she got the taste for murder and has been making 'The Agency' a very successful and lucrative business for a number of years. Taking on different personas she targets desperately vulnerable individuals persuading them into paying big money for a designer death as a final escape but callously murders them once they have paid. Killing for cash has not been enough to satisfy her for some time though, so, in the guise of an old man, Walter Terry she has taken to murder just for the thrill too. In New Zealand the universal laws of six degrees of separation get thrown out of the window due to the small population and two degrees are more like the norm; as Calder's neighbours set him up with a friend Tara Danes