Ripples on the Lake

Rotorangi, Dawn

A tightly written paranormal thriller about what happens when a Pakeha family unwittingly invoke an ancient tohunga’s curse. When an out-of-it Billy Delaney steals coins from a sacred rock on the shores of Lake Taupo to buy a hamburger late one night, he has no idea what he is about to unleash upon himself and his immediate family. But Billy had always been trouble, and when the oldest of Lucky Delaney’s children, Saffron, steps in to try and take care of him again, trouble swarms over the Delaneys like bees on a honey pot. First Saffron and Billy’s young niece suffer an horrific traffic accident, leaving her in a coma, balanced precariously between life and death. And then the Delaneys begin to die horribly, one by one. It’s left to a disbelieving Saffron and an unlikely ally — Nick, a burnt-out war photographer — to resolve the crisis.