Review: "So what's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?"
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 10, 2014
New Zealand born, Australian author Vicki Tyley is highly regarded for her consistently excellent mystery and suspense novels. She adds to the flavor of her well-sculpted stories the atmosphere of Australia - that land that most all of us who live in the US long to visit, and for good reason. Tyley knows what appeals to her readers, focuses on that, uses the technique of creating a stunner of an opener and follows that with a well-woven suspense tale that only comes into full light at novel's end.  Tyley likely captured her affinity for suspense in her extensive travels around the world just prior to the terrorism threat halted most all inquisitive travel. Work wise she has been in banking, stockbroking, importing and wholesaling, human resources, mining, hospitality, civil engineering, and toys, in predominantly accounting, IT and management roles and has spread her influence (and absorbed the matrices for her books) by her residencies from the central business districts of large cities, suburbia, idyllic seaside locations, rural areas, bushland, and remote desert mining camps. This lady has been around. After a serious illness in 2002 she reassessed her priorities and began to pursue her dream of being a writer. And once again, success has met her head on!Tyley insists that her signature is a suspenseful prologue that opens the door to the many twists and turns inherent in fine mystery writing. Here, in FATAL LAISON, she also includes a study of the current obsession with online dating, the use of the social media for communication and for partnering - and for leading to at time disastrous results. We meet Greg Jenkins in a conversation with his mother over the fact that his just divorced sister Sam (Samantha) has not been available for phone calls. His curiosity is aroused further when he probes into the `group' of social media dating agency (`Dinner for Twelve') as being associated with what becomes Sam's disappearance. By chance the single professional career woman Megan Brighton has been talked into the dating game for the same Dinner for Twelve clique by her best friend Brenda. Brenda disappears much the same was as Samantha and this `coincidence ` is magnified when one of the clients for Dinner At Twelve is murdered - a factor that unites Greg and Megan in the intrigue for `suspect suspect whose got the suspect?'This spins its way to a well-designed conclusion, allowing the entry of some romance, terror, hints of Australian atmosphere and a serious look at agency dating. A good solid read, this. Grady Harp, May 14