Bøger af Greg Tuck

After the exploits dealing with police corruption, (see "You Don't Say" in the Downs Crime Mystery series) Detective Inspector "Sarge" Downs from Cairns was looking for a break. However, while on a holiday in Hong Kong with his partner Sarah, he finds himself in trouble. He had decided to accompany his partner Sarah, who, as a lecturer at James Cook University in marine biology and toxicology had been invited to be a guest speaker at a world wide seminar. Sarge unwittingly becomes involved in a Chinese drug triad after coming to the rescue of a man being beaten up in a market place in Hong Kong. Sarge is captured by the triad and held to ransom. With the aid of Chief Inspector Li of the Hong Kong Police, Geoff Smith from the Australian Federal Police and Sergeant Nat Johns from Cairns, Sarge is released and then helps them to curtail the activities of the triad.

The Rhinogres are a mercenary army of creatures that are the cross between rhinoceroses and ogres. Hobgoblins are also members of the army. They live in mediaeval times and are based in the Caucasus Mountains in Eastern Europe. The Rhinogres in the army are not the brightest bunch and only two have any real intelligence and they are the leader and the second in command. Even the sorcerers who were supposed to be gifted were lacking in grey matter. They are accompanied by powerful beasts such as sabre-tooth tigers, mammoths, horned yaks and mountainboars. The army has been asked by the incumbent king of the land of the Dead in Egypt to help solve a mystery and to assist him in putting down a coup. Just getting to the Land of the Dead is in itself quite an arduous task as they have to avoid trolls, swamps, goblins, shifting sands, orcs and thirst. Once the army arrive in Thebes on the Nile River, they are taken to see the king. The land they had arrived at was well named as all men and creatures were nothing but skeletons. The king's own guard was comprised of The Land of the Dead's own fantastic beasts including manticores and gigantic skeletal cobras. Only the wisdom of their two best and brightest, some bravery and a great deal of luck see them survive and triumph.

A somewhat jaded teacher is posted to a one teacher rural school, high up in the mountains in Victoria, Australia. Douglasville was originally a gold mining town and then became a timber town. A series of events have seen the population drop and the school nearly close. The teacher tries to revive the community and also his career. In doing so, he discovers that there is a deep rift within the town that was exacerbated by the deaths of two men within a week. These men were from two of the main families who control the town. From the jungles of Vietnam to the forests of Victoria, clues emerge that unravel the mysteriously linked deaths. This book contains many of the strange and often humorous things that many rural school teachers have come across in their small schools.

By sheer chance Mary spots a pickpocket at the Queen Victoria Market and gives chase. The pickpocket is arrested. The owner of the stolen wallet is so grateful that he offers Mary's mother a job as a live-in maid. The Evans family take up residence in the Hansens' house in Hawthorn, a well to-do suburb of Melbourne. Mary finds it palatial in comparison to sleeping in the back alleys of North Melbourne. The Hansens insist that she begin school at a nearby private girls' school. Mary excels at school and her world becomes much more expansive. New people enter that world. The Great Depression hits just as Mary wins a scholarship. The Hansens are very community minded and determined to help those struggling. This along with the exposure to many places, ideas and people help Mary to weld together a framework of philosophy and ethics beyond her years.

The Queensland police officer based in Cairns, Detective Acting Inspector Bernard Downs, still known as Sarge to all his colleagues, was quickly promoted after his true abilities came to the fore in solving a murder mystery interstate. (See "Last Breath", a novel in the Downs Crime Mystery series). Now aided by a young constable, Nat Johns, he becomes involved in the trail that is discovered when a strange death occurs at a retirement home in Port Douglas. It seems that the Fitzgerald Inquiry in the late 1980's, that saw the demise of a premier, gaoling of a police commissioner and major clean out of the political, legal and policing fraternity didn't root out all corruption. Sarge finds that his investigation into the suspicious death leads to some very high profile people. It puts him and Nat Johns at severe risk and has consequences for Sarge's partner Sarah and, Nat's partner Jess.

Washed up in a storm, a part of a human body leads Detective Inspector "Sarge" Downs and Detective Senior Sergeant Nat Johns of the Criminal Investigation Branch based in Cairns, Queensland down to Melbourne to investigate why a man had fled so far north only to be murdered and his body disposed of at sea. They discover a dysfunctional family that has a criminal background all too willing to cover-up what may have happened to their son and brother. With the aid of Victorian police, they attempt to find the murderer and uncover the conspiracy that surrounds it.

A private jet crashes into the hillside above Cairns. Bodies are retrieved and the plane contents are examined. All is not as it should be and Detective Chief Inspector "Sarge" Downs and Detective Sergeant Nat Johns of Cairns CID are called in to investigate. There are a whole lot of anomalies and this pair call in support from others including the AFP, ASIO and the defence force. Piece by piece the puzzle is put together, but not before Nat's and Sarge's families are targeted. Investigations lead them, not only through outback Queensland and the Northern Territory, but also to Spain and Morocco. This case proves to be one of the most complex, mysterious and dangerous ones that they have encountered.

Retired police officer 'Sarge' Downs and his family and friends find themselves embroiled in a well-hidden corruption process that had skimmed millions over the years from the Queensland government. The discovery of this leads to murder, kidnapping and dealing with a group of desperate criminals as the noose tightens around the leaders. Far from, their quiet life in Cairns, the family calls on friends to help extricate them from the dangerous situation they have found themselves in. Sarge, a known technophobe, longs for the days when life was so much simpler.

Coral Voyager, a large cruise ship, is confronted by a storm just of the north Queensland coast. It finally runs aground just south of Cairns. A massive rescue effort gets underway and all passengers are safely taken by a flotilla of small boats to Cairns. Due to the brilliant seamanship of its captain, the Coral Voyager sustains very little damage except for its steering. Two ocean going tugs arrive from Townsville and the ship is refloated. As it heads out to sea under tow, two crewmen are found to be missing. After a thorough search of the vessel, the Queensland Police are notified. Chief Inspector "Sarge" Downs and two colleagues board the ship to investigate only to discover that all is not as it seems. They stay with the ship which is towed back to Townsville and try to unravel the clues as to what exactly had taken place.

Les Crétineux are an army of misfits that wandered their way around northern Europe in search of employment in medieval times. They head even further north seeking a reward from a supposedly captured Norwegian princess.How they managed to survive attacks from wood goblins, dire wolves, ogres, dwarves, monstrous eagles and their own ineptitude is a mystery in itself. Follow their unbelievable journey as they set off under the leadership of a portly, pompous and mad inventor, Rozier, who has created weapons that defy logic and all safety prohibitions. Archers, crossbowmen, knights, swordsmen, halberdiers and an array of other dullards form the basis of the army whose collective IQ doesn't hit three figures if you discount a couple of others. Please be warned; dad jokes and puns abound and the author accepts no responsibility for the readers eyes rolling so much that they fall out of their sockets.

Growing up on the north west coast of Italy in the mid fifteenth century, a boy is at last able to trace his own history after leaving his idyllic secluded village. Traveling to Lucca, Pisa and on to Genoa, he meets and befriends a number of people who pass on to him advice as he tries to wrestle with the dilemmas that many teenagers feel as they try to establish their own identity in the world. While he continues to search for his kidnapped mother, he comes across a strange handwritten book full of calligraphy written in a strange language. Little by little he gains some understanding of the contents but struggles to come to terms with why parts of it seem strangely familiar. The riddle of The Perchè-No Manifesto is eventually solved and many of his questions are answered by the time he returns to his village, no longer a child but a man with a purpose.

The Abysmal Army is a group of misfits and rejects of armies that tried their best to make a living in medieval times when what we now call mythical creatures lived and worked side by side with humans. The Abysmals were a mixed bag of dwarves, gargoyles, grotesques, dragons, orcs and the occasional human. They traveled all over Europe looking for fame and fortune. However they were the least successful army going around and would run up the surrender flag at the drop of a helmet. In these times, war was constantly being waged. Mercenary armies were hired by villagers to defend their homes. In the case of the Abysmal army, fear was their greatest threat. They were scared of everything. Thackery was their leader and he formed 99% of the collective IQ of the army. If you are into puns, impossible situations and have a warped sense of humour, this may be the book for you.

Detective Inspector "Sarge" Downs of the Queensland police was returning to Cairns when he was witness to the horrific slaying of a young motorbike rider. Cradling the dying young woman in his arms he made a silent vow to find the assassins. In investigating the death with the aid of colleagues, Acting Detective Sergeant Nat Johns and Constable Liz Rhodes, he finds an extraordinary web of criminal activity hiding just below the surface. Real estate fraud, extortion, prostitution, money laundering, drug trafficking and people smuggling are all somehow linked to the death of this bright young university student. Border Force and the Australian Federal Police become involved and assist Sarge and his team in solving the murder.

Mary Evans, having survived living on the streets in Melbourne, Australia in the 1920's with her mother and her brother, has settled into becoming part of the family of the Hansens where her mother now works as a maid and companion. It was a remarkable change from the slums of North Melbourne to the well-to-do suburb of Hawthorn. Having won a scholarship to a private school, Mary in Part 2 is going through the strange adolescent period that every person goes through at secondary school. Sometimes very confident, sometimes very unsure and of course there are boys. It is the time of the Great Depression and the Hansens are doing what they can to support the less well off in the community. Mary, her brother David and her mother also pitch in.

Just after the birth of his second child, Detective Inspector "Sarge" Downs of the Queensland police based in Cairns receives a mysterious parcel. In it he finds various accounts of the role his grandfather, Wilfred, played during the Second World War. Sarge had inherited his middle name from his grandfather and only seen him as a withered old man who didn't seem to be able to do much. However Sarge learns that he was very much mistaken. In his youth his grandfather had volunteered into the armed forces. Such was his talent he was deployed to assist a 'coastwatcher' on a very small Micronesian island near the Equator. The Japanese subsequently set up a base on the island. Wilf was able to get all the islanders and the coastwatcher off the island to safely. The island would draw him back again. He came with group of commandos to investigate what the Japanese were doing there. In doing so a major incident took place that would haunt the young Wilf for the rest of his life. He was then asked to lead another sortie into Burma to see if there was another point that General Slim's army could push the Japanese back into Thailand and Malaya. What happened during that mission threw Wilf into deep depression and he fled to the family farm in outback far north Queensland. All the citations, commendations and medals he refused to accept. Sarge when he finished reading about his grandfather had cause to reflect on what a true unsung hero his grandfather was and that his grandfather who had blamed himself for the events that took place on the island had no reason whatsoever to do so.

The fictional character from Between the Wars series Michael Harrington began writing poetry when he first met Mary Evans, a teenage girl he met in the 1930's at a joint school dance In Melbourne, Australia. Very quiet and unassuming, he used his poetry to profess his love of her and to reflect on his young life that was about to have a massive upheaval as the Second World War approached.

Bernard Wilfred Downs, a Detective Inspector in the Queensland Police force preferred to be called Sarge by everyone. He was called "Young 'un" by his uncle; "Short Arse" by his mates when he was much younger. The latter was ironic as he was well over 185 cm and nearly 100 kg when he was still in secondary school. When he first graduated from police training he was sent to Melbourne, Victoria by his uncle to help his older cousin Francis, who somehow had become entangled in the gangland warfare that was ripping through the Melbourne underworld. Between the two of them they manage to avoid adding to the ever increasing numbers of dead and injured. But only just.

In Part 3, Mary Evans is about to graduate from secondary school and enter into university which was not a very common thing for young women during the late 1930's in Melbourne, Australia.She is still living with the Hansens where her mother works as a live-in maid and companion in the affluent suburb of Hawthorn. Australia is just coming out of the Great Depression but war looms on the horizon in Europe. Mary has grown up a lot and matured beyond her years. She is slowly building relationships, in particular, one has become very strong and that is with her boyfriend Michael who is also on the way to university.

While on a holiday Detective Inspector "Sarge" Downs, his partner Sarah, their daughter Katie and Sarge's Uncle Ray accidentally come across a drug trafficking business that has links back to Cairns where Sarge is in charge of the Criminal Investigation Branch. Unwittingly caught up in the delivery of drugs around New Zealand, they continue their journey and seek help from the New Zealand police and the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service who also become involved. As they explore many of the things that the South Island of New Zealand has to offer, they are always aware of the danger that they face.

As people age, their perceptions of things around them change. Many older people say that they become more fine tuned. The younger generation think however that means narrower. Silly Old Bugger is a collection of the thoughts of a man who has experienced a lot and has come away with a jaundiced view of the complex and the simple things of life. From body hair and kitchen appliances, through to the law and the meaning of life, this silly old bugger is not afraid to express an opinion on anything. Wit and humour abounds and a sense of the absurd is needed to gain a true understanding of this man's attitude to all the important things that matter............. to him

Chief Inspector, 'Sarge' Downs of the Cairns police in Queensland, Australia is drawn into the investigation and coroner's inquest following an explosion of an LPG tanker being hauled by a locomotive to Cairns. The information that is established in the inquest shows that it was not an accident. In searching for the suspect, all of Cairns comes under threat from an unexpected quarter that has major links to the university where his partner Professor Sarah Blake works. The outcome will not be known until the very end.

Sergeant Downs, or Sarge as he preferred, was minding his own business in the Cairns police station in Far North Queensland, Australia, when a stranger entered his life. Blessed with a photographic memory and a doggedness of purpose, Sarge was finally able to place the person and answer why warning bells were sounding in the deep recesses of his mind. To quell that nagging annoying noise he embarked on a journey that would take him half way across Australia to the outback town of Coober Pedy and then into outback far north Queensland. In the process he would solve the years' old mystery of two missing opal miners. Had he in fact uncovered the real truth though?Author's note: This is the first in the Downs Crime Mystery Series. Each book in the series can be read in isolation in any order. However, when read in sequence, greater understanding of the traits of the lead characters is gained.This is the first in the Downs Crime Mysteries series

Detective Inspector "Sarge" Downs uncle is visiting his nephew in Cairns. Ray Downs had adopted Sarge when Sarge was only four after his parents had been killed in a car accident. Ray was normally a quietly spoken man, mainly because his wife Jean wouldn't let him get a word in edgeways. However, when he was given a number of drinks, Ray became quite garrulous and told Sarge and Sarge's partner Sarah about the time he was caught up in National Service. Instead of being sent to Vietnam, Ray was seconding to the intelligence section of the army based in Canberra, where he came across some illegal operations, spying and corruption around the time of the change in government in Australia when the Labor Party's Gough Whitlam rose to power.

Twin brothers on two sides of the world are kidnapped at the same time sparking investigations in both Cairns in Northern Queensland and Inverness in Scotland. Two police forces are joined in trying to solve the crime. During the investigation, Sarge (Detective Chief Inspector) Downs and his two colleagues discover that the supply and distribution of narcotics are involved and the twin brothers' business is not all that it seems to be. Sarge and Detective Sergeant Liz Rhodes fly to Scotland to search for links in the chain of evidence. Their Scottish counterparts Donald McPherson and Amelia Campbell ably assist them and eventually they all fly back to Australia to try to prevent the possible death of one of the brothers. Just who the kidnapper is and what his motives are, remain a mystery until the very end.

An elderly woman is slowly dying in hospital and her old neighbor and friend has returned to be by her bedside. She had been found as a child outside a bombed house in the streets of London during the Blitz in World War 2. Unable to speak and suddenly orphaned she was evacuated to Liverpool and then out to Australia where she was adopted by a farming couple in a small country town. She steadfastly refused to give up a crumpled photo she had carried with her. On the back was the word Gilly and so everyone assumed that was her name. Her friend returns to the old farmhouse and makes some incredible discoveries including a previously unknown artist studio with some brilliant artwork of Paris. He also finds her diaries. To find out more about her he advertises in a London paper. What happens after that makes you question the telepathy that is thought to perhaps exist between siblings.

Dominated by a federal government, in a three-tier system of government, Australian politics is based on a constitution written in the 1890's that is extremely difficult to change via referendums. It is a Westminster system of government that has two separate chambers that are dominated by two major parties whose ideologies differ and both the sides are very combative to the extent that agreement on issues except politician wage increase, are hard won battles. If one side thinks of an idea, the other side shoots it down in flames, whether the idea is good or not. The public have become disillusioned and feel impotent to change things and see most politicians as merely sucking on the public teat and lining their own pockets. A good few of the political rank's behaviour does nothing to dispel that idea.Politics changed a lot in Australia from late 2013 onwards, although many will attest to the fact that it hasn't changed at all. There are still lies, deception, obfuscation and manipulation and these have had to become more sophisticated as social media has come to the fore. I have been adding my own comments to mainstream media and my own political blog in those years and on reflection I am amazed at the types of characters that are regularly unearthed and come to the forefront in our political climate. Some characters have developed over that time. Some were just fleeting shadows on the political spectrum. Others rose from obscurity and some may have also have faded back into it. Characters and events overlap. Views change and political manoeuvres take place. Ideology dictates much of what goes on. Hopefully my blog entries and reflections will help paint a picture of these characters and events that dominated the political scene in this period. This is not a chronological history of the time, merely one person's thoughts that he wanted to scream at the major players in Australian politics at the time.However, the disappointing thing about all these comments and research is what I still really don't understand is, that with so many pricks in Canberra, why the Canberra bubble doesn't burst?This is the fourth book in the series and covers the year 2017

Dominated by a federal government, in a three-tier system of government, Australian politics is based on a constitution written in the 1890's that is extremely difficult to change via referendums. It is a Westminster system of government that has two separate chambers that are dominated by two major parties whose ideologies differ and both the sides are very combative to the extent that agreement on issues except politician wage increase, are hard won battles. If one side thinks of an idea, the other side shoots it down in flames, whether the idea is good or not. The public have become disillusioned and feel impotent to change things and see most politicians as merely sucking on the public teat and lining their own pockets. A good few of the political rank's behaviour does nothing to dispel that idea.Politics changed a lot in Australia from late 2013 onwards, although many will attest to the fact that it hasn't changed at all. There are still lies, deception, obfuscation and manipulation and these have had to become more sophisticated as social media has come to the fore. I have been adding my own comments to mainstream media and my own political blog in those years and on reflection I am amazed at the types of characters that are regularly unearthed and come to the forefront in our political climate. Some characters have developed over that time. Some were just fleeting shadows on the political spectrum. Others rose from obscurity and some may have also have faded back into it. Characters and events overlap. Views change and political manoeuvres take place. Ideology dictates much of what goes on. Hopefully my blog entries and reflections will help paint a picture of these characters and events that dominated the political scene in this period. This is not a chronological history of the time, merely one person's thoughts that he wanted to scream at the major players in Australian politics at the time.However, the disappointing thing about all these comments and research is what I still really don't understand is, that with so many pricks in Canberra, why the Canberra bubble doesn't burst?This is the sixth book in the series and covers the year 2019

Dominated by a federal government, in a three-tier system of government, Australian politics is based on a constitution written in the 1890's that is extremely difficult to change via referendums. It is a Westminster system of government that has two separate chambers that are dominated by two major parties whose ideologies differ and both the sides are very combative to the extent that agreement on issues except politician wage increase, are hard won battles. If one side thinks of an idea, the other side shoots it down in flames, whether the idea is good or not. The public have become disillusioned and feel impotent to change things and see most politicians as merely sucking on the public teat and lining their own pockets. A good few of the political rank's behaviour does nothing to dispel that idea.

Dominated by a federal government, in a three-tier system of government, Australian politics is based on a constitution written in the 1890's that is extremely difficult to change via referendums. It is a Westminster system of government that has two separate chambers that are dominated by two major parties whose ideologies differ and both the sides are very combative to the extent that agreement on issues except politician wage increase, are hard won battles. If one side thinks of an idea, the other side shoots it down in flames, whether the idea is good or not. The public have become disillusioned and feel impotent to change things and see most politicians as merely sucking on the public teat and lining their own pockets. A good few of the political rank's behaviour does nothing to dispel that idea.Politics changed a lot in Australia from late 2013 onwards, although many will attest to the fact that it hasn't changed at all. There are still lies, deception, obfuscation and manipulation and these have had to become more sophisticated as social media has come to the fore. I have been adding my own comments to mainstream media and my own political blog in those years and on reflection I am amazed at the types of characters that are regularly unearthed and come to the forefront in our political climate. Some characters have developed over that time. Some were just fleeting shadows on the political spectrum. Others rose from obscurity and some may have also have faded back into it. Characters and events overlap. Views change and political manoeuvres take place. Ideology dictates much of what goes on. Hopefully my blog entries and reflections will help paint a picture of these characters and events that dominated the political scene in this period. This is not a chronological history of the time, merely one person's thoughts that he wanted to scream at the major players in Australian politics at the time.However, the disappointing thing about all these comments and research is what I still really don't understand is, that with so many pricks in Canberra, why the Canberra bubble doesn't burst?This is the second book in the series and covers the year 2015

As an observer of politics, it is easy to see that nothing ever really changes. Behind the smoke and mirrors of whatever party is in power the mantra is still the same. It is an adversarial system of government with adverse results for the public. There is a lot of ranting and raving, but it is all theatre and at times you have to wonder who is paying for such bad actors who keep on losing the plot. Then you realise that it is we, the taxpayers, who have to foot the bill as punishment for elevating these people (mainly older white men) to the top of the ballot paper that did not have the names of the best and brightest listed on it. Out of all this reflection on what happens in parliament and government, where all is not what it seems, several truths stand out. This is a collection of my learned political truths that I have written over the years. I believe that they are all original and I hope they entertain.