“The police were his natural enemy and his upbringing, such as it was, had been steeped in hostility towards them. But he did not hate or fear them. He’d rarely tangled with them. They had a job to do, and one day they might get him but he rarely thought about that. It would be self-defeating. If you showed your antipathy you drew attention to yourself. Wyatt liked to be invisible”

The Heat is the eighth book in the Wyatt series by Australian author, Garry Disher. Wyatt is broke: he needs to do a job. But not the sort of job his acquaintance Stefan is steering him towards: the armoured van heist the Pepper brothers are planning looks all wrong. And as Wyatt departs Melbourne for warmer climes, he learns just how wrong the Peppers job was, and hopes his fleeting contact with them is without repercussions.

On the Gold Coast, he meets up with David Minto, a property developer who introduces him to a client wanting a certain painting, currently housed in Noosa Heads, stolen. Her story sounds credible, and the fee is right. But his contact in Noosa, Minto’s niece Leah Quarrell, has Wyatt feeling uneasy about just how many people are involved. Wyatt prefers not to rely on people he doesn’t know, and Leah seems determined to be included. But just who can be trusted?

Once the reader accepts the basic premise (Wyatt is a crook; he steals for a living; he doesn’t hesitate to maim or kill if necessary, but prefers not to do so if he can avoid it) then it can be hard not to want him to succeed. Especially if the source of the painting is genuinely what the client claims, and even more so when the present owner proves to be what he is. Wyatt is an experienced, careful, vigilant and thorough operator. Rather wonderfully wicked. Economical with words and succinct in his observations of those around him: “He was about nineteen, dark, underfed, nostrils raw and his skin crawling. He couldn’t keep still. He was having the time of his life, which would be short”.

This latest instalment of Australia’s favourite crook is fast-paced and action-packed: paintings are stolen, a ransom is demanded, a double cross is engineered; quite a few people die. It features some ruthless women, and some men whose better judgement is clouded by testosterone. The feel of the different settings (suburban Melbourne, the Gold Coast, Noosa) is expertly conveyed. The plot is original, with a twist or two to keep it interesting. Readers unfamiliar with Disher’s work are bound to want to seek out his backlist; fans of his Wyatt series will not be disappointed. Text offer a money-back guarantee on this one, and it’s a fairly safe bet for them. A brilliant read!