Taken by Dinuka McKenzie

Dinuka McKenzie is one of a growing group of young Australian crime novelists who have emerged in the past few years. She has written two fast-paced thrillers: The Torrent (2022) and Taken. Both novels reflect her background as woman of Sri Lankan origin, who arrived in Australia aged 12 and is now the mother of two young children.

The books features Detective Kate Miles, also a young married woman trying to balance work and domestic life, together with strains on relationships in both her workplace and her extended family. In the first book, Kate was pregnant and was wounded in the arrest of a violent criminal. In Taken, she has returned to work after recovering from her injuries and from the traumatic caesarean birth of her second child. Her husband’s contract work has evaporated and she is the main breadwinner, struggling to pay the mortgage, support her preschooler son and still breastfeeding her baby daughter.

Kate is a woman of Asian heritage, stationed at a substantial police office in a large regional town in the Gold Coast hinterland. Her sergeant is a prickly character who doubts her capabilities to return to full-time detective duties and routinely undermines her standing with fellow police officers.
In this challenging environment, Kate takes on a violent offender who has physically assaulted a succession of partners, while physically and mentally intimidating his victims into refusing to co-operate with police investigations.

In the midst of this investigation, a four-month-old baby girl disappears from her crib in another part of the town, apparently abducted. Initial inquiries uncover few clues although there are several key suspects, all of whom are soon found to be lying in their statements to police. Detective Miles struggles to juggle her family duties, her relationships with her son, husband and father with her twin investigations and pressure from the media for answers.

Dinuka McKenzie presents a realistic narrative, drawing on her personal experiences of raising young children, breastfeeding and balancing work/life challenges. Taken is a persuasive documentation of the scenario of women police officers facing many pressures from male colleagues, compounded by her appearance as a “brown skinned” female in an environment (both at work and in the community) dominated by muscular white males. She also feels guilt at her duties limiting her ability to be at home to support her young family as well as her father and an elderly “quasi grandmother” in care.

This is a sensitive book, showing the stresses of typical crime investigations among a complex of emotions and relationships. Kate comes through with some further scars, but with credible outcomes to her investigations and resolutions to many of her challenges. There are some loose ends, though, indicating that there will be further books in the Detective Kate Miles series.

Reviewed by Peter Maywald
SMSA Member