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HUNTER
by Jack Heath
(Allen & Unwin, $33)
Canberra-based writer Jack Heath is prolific. Before turning his hand to the thriller genre, he authored 20 YA novels and is a popular speaker, promoting reading and writing to kids. Hunter is his second adult thriller, a sequel to
Hangman
, which introduced Timothy Blake who has a thing for eating human flesh. There we met a protagonist who fed his strange addiction by working for the FBI, receiving the recently executed to dine on instead of a paycheque: "It's like playing hangman, but in reverse," says his handler in that book. "When you solve the puzzle, you get the guy on the gallows." The saving grace, if you will, is that Blake only eats "bad people" — and there are plenty of those in Heath's Houston. Fans of Greg Hurwitz's vigilante assassin Evan Smoak will enjoy. Others may tire of the cartoon gore.