What is an ad for a crime thriller doing on the home page of Flat Chat? OK, for a start this brand new novel is partially set in an apartment – specifically one owned by a smart, youngish, sea-changing couple in the little town of Kiama.

They’re called Cate and Rory and their almost perfect life starts to unravel rapidly when they go on holiday. However, they can’t “lock up and leave” due to having acquired a Covid puppy, as so many apartment dwellers did when they needed to find an excuse for going outside during the pandemic.

So they hire a dog-sitter who turns out to have an ulterior motive rather than just needing somewhere to stay for a few weeks.

While they are away, she sets out to destroy their lives in highly sophisticated ways, from sending fake handwritten resignation letters to Cate’s workplace, to cancelling their credit cards, emptying their bank account, abducting the dog (Iris), cutting off their phones and internet and installing Airbnb guests in their flat.

And as if that wasn’t enough of a problem, Cate and Rory, her husband, have no idea who she really is or and why she’s doing this.

And there’s another reason this is appearing on these pages – the author, James Dunbar, is your very own JimmyT, who has discovered that renown as a “strataguru” doesn’t translate into credibility as a crime writer.

Case in point, a couple of years ago I met actor Bryan Brown who said “you’re that guy who talks about apartments on the radio” even though I’d co-written the TV series Rain Shadow starring his missus, Rachel Ward.

So please, forget the strataguru thing for a while and think about a very real modern nightmare where you are cut off from the tangled networks that make your life easier – until your credit card company can’t send you a code on your phone and your phone company can’t send you a confirmation email because your email address isn’t working, and your email provider needs a credit card number before it lets you back in.

And there you are in a seemingly never-ending loop of mistrust and rejection. Oh, and your dog has gone missing too. Having just spent an hour trying to reconnect Stan, but couldn’t do it because I had forgotten my Samsung password, I can assure you, it’s very easy to fall off the grid. Even easier when someone else cuts the wires. Enjoy.

‘A premise that’s all too real. Twisted River will have you hooked from start to finish … but you may never go on holiday again.’ – Michael Brissenden

Twisted River by James Dunbar (who also wrote Mole Creek) is available now in your local bookshop; for more information and to order online, go HERE. And you can find out more about both James Dunbar novels HERE.