Special thanks are due to several people this time round.
To Natalie Freer—she is always the first person to read my pages and she reads them in 40-page chunks. Thanks again for your extraordinary patience, generosity and support. To my brother, Stephen Reilly—for his unsurpassed loyalty and his razor-sharp comments on the text. (Have I ever mentioned that he has written the best screenplay I have ever read?)
To my parents, as always, for their love, encouragement and support. To my good friend John Schrooten for being the guinea pig for the third time. (John is the first person to read my books in toto—I still remember him reading Ice Station while we were watching a cricket match at the Sydney Cricket Ground.) Also to Nik Kozlina for her early comments on the text and to Simon Kozlina for letting me give the hero of this book his face!
Lastly, mention must be made of the good folk at Pan Macmillan. To Cate Paterson, my publisher, for—well—making all of this possible really. Her endeavours to publish mass-market thriller fiction in this country are unmatched. To Anna McFarlane, my editor, for bringing out the best in me. To every single sales rep at Pan—they’re out there, every day, working the front lines in bookstores around the country. And last of all, a very special thank you to Jane Novak, my publicist at Pan, for guarding me like a mother hen and for seeing the irony when Richard Stubbs and I talked about her—our mutual publicist—on national radio!
Well, that’s it. Now, on with the show . . .