WRITE PLACE: Donna Malane's new crime novel

Woman on a mission deals to bad guys
Donna Malane's new crime novel, Surrender, is a gripping mystery with brutal twists, some seriously nasty bad guys and a strong woman in the lead role.
While a tough female voice on the New Zealand crime prevention scene isn't something we hear every day, Malane said she didn't set out to write about a staunch Kiwi woman.
She jokes of her main character Diane Rowe: "She just kind of pushed me around and sneered at everything I wrote until I agreed to write her that way."
Diane Rowe is definitely a woman with a mission.
Using her job as a missing persons expert and her contacts in the police, she's on the hunt for her little sister's murderer. When we first meet her, she's come up with nothing and has managed to lose her job, her husband and the plot.
It's only when her sister's killer turns up dead that clues start to mesh together and Rowe is forced to follow an unfamiliar path that leads to some harsh home truths and tricky personal demons.
Malane says she sincerely wanted Rowe to come across as real. "Not 'feisty'. I hate that description of female characters. I think Kiwi women are resilient and with a good sense of humour, two attributes I've enjoyed giving Diane. She's flawed, all too often gets things wrong, but she can laugh at herself ...
"So many crime novels and TV shows depict women as victims. I was keen to write a story where the main character was an active participant in the world."
Malane knows what she's talking about. She worked for years behind the scenes on Crimewatch. She interviewed victims, translating their trauma and heartache into bite-sized pieces, and wrote up the re-enactments that recreated the circumstances.
"I met a lot of women who were victims of crimes, many rape victims, for example, and what I learned from that experience is that despite the violence against them, they still remain themselves.
"Hurt or injured, of course, but dauntless."
Surrender is set in a Wellington stripped back to reveal a seedy underworld of prostitution and drugs. But Malane deftly balances the sleaze with a missing persons search in the beautiful surrounds of the Rimutaka State Forest.
What's most appealing about the story is Rowe's dogged determination in the face of perilous situations and sinister characters.
The black humour of her inner self-deprecation is peculiarly Kiwi.
Surrender won the inaugural New Zealand Society of Authors/Pindar Publishing Prize from more than 500 entries. Judges described it as "superbly written".
With a stunning ending to match the compelling narrative, it's well worth a peep.
MALANE, D. Surrender. Auckland, NZSA. RRP $20.