Joe is in control of everything in his simple life, including his day job at the police department and his "night work." He isn't bothered by the daily news reports of the Christchurch Carver, who, they say, has murdered seven women. Joe knows the Carver only killed six, and he's determined to find the copy cat killer. He's going to punish him for the one, then frame him for the other six. All he needs now is to take care of all the women who keep getting in his way; his domineering mother is one. Then there is Sally, the maintenance worker who sees him as a replacement for her dead brother; and the mysterious Melissa, the only woman to have ever understood him, but whose fantasies of blackmail and torture don't have a place in Joe's investigation. In The Cleaner, a finalist for the prestigious Ned Kelly Award for Best Fiction, Paul Cleave brings the underbelly of Christchurch to gritty life in the way that Dennis Lehane does for Boston and Tana French for Dublin. Taut and chilling, it's a masterful blend of psychological suspense and complex characters from one of the most gifted new authors in the crime thriller genre.
