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Praise for Blood Men - The Courier Mail, Brisbane

"Cleave writes like the fine-tuned punches of a middleweight boxer - with short sharp jabs to the solar plexus that make you gasp. The Kiwi crime writer scores another knock-out punch with his latest novel... The pace and the carnage accelerate toward a climax lasting for several pages and leaving you breathless."

Blood Men - It’s official – Paul has been signed up in the US by Simon and Schuster for a multibook deal. Simon and Schuster will start with Blood Men, releasing it July 2010. Paul’s excited to be published in the US by the same company who publish Stephen King and John Connolly, his two favourite authors. Blood Men has also been signed by Heyne and is due for release in Germany in September and, closer to home, will be released by Random House in New Zealand and Australia in February. Blood Men is the story of Edward Hunter, a man growing up in the shadow of his serial killer father. Want to know more about Blood Men? Then click on the Novels page to find out!

Cemetery Lake immediately hit the NZ Bestsellers List on its release in 2008. On its release in Germany in 2009, it climbed to the #2 spot on Amazon.de, falling in behind Dan Brown’s latest book, selling over 50,000 copies within its first month. It made the NZ Listener Best Books of 2008, ranked up there against the top national and international titles of the year. The Listener says

"Cleave tells the story with great flair. The plot is beautifully constructed, the characters come to worrying life, and it is all wrapped in an atmosphere of prevading evil that will make you wonder whether you should be reading it late at night..."

The book follows Theodore Tate, a private investigator who stumbles upon three corpses who bubble up to the surface of a small lake inside the grounds of a cemetery, while an exhumation is taking place. To read the opening chapter, click here.

"While he writes with more energy than most crime writers, Cleave operates in a tightly proportioned mental space. Cemetery Lake is as well organised as a Crowded House pop song, the middle section equally unexpected and intricate." - The Australian.

The Cleaner becomes an international bestseller!

Paul has now been signed up by Random House in the UK! Random UK will be releasing Cemetery Lake first, due to hit bookstores September 09. Paul has now been signed up by France, Australia, Germany, Czech Republic, Russia, Poland, Japan, Turkey and the US.

After its release in Germany in April of 2007, it sold 250,000 copies before the end of the year, making it one of the biggest and fastest selling debut novels ever to come out of New Zealand. On Germany’s Amazon, it was the #1 selling crime novel for 2007. It was the #3 biggest selling paperback for the year, and was #10 for all books. This included an almost two month period in the #2 position, where the only book outselling it was the new Harry Potter. For 2007 it was #25 on the Spiegel bestseller list, a list that encompasses over 350 bookshops in Germany. The book is also available in Germany as an audio download on www.audible.de – where it also spent nearly two months as the #1 selling audio book. The Killing Hour has been released in Germany in July, and Cemetery Lake is due in 2009.

In 2007 The Cleaner made the shortlist for the Ned Kelly Award for Best Fiction. The Ned Kelly Award is Australia's crime writing award given yearly to recognize outstanding Australian writing. The Cleaner originally made the long list for two categories - Best Fiction and Best First Fiction. In 2006, The Cleaner made the 'NZ Listener Best Books' and was the only NZ crime novel to make the list amongst stiff international competition for the year.

The reviews are in!

All of Paul's books have both been released to outstanding reviews. Germany’s NDR Radio, one of the biggest stations in the country, have called him ‘The next Stephen King’. Tess Gerritsen has said ‘Cleave is a writer to watch’. The NZ Listener said ‘Cleave ... has an energy that conventional crime novels lack’. To see what the newspapers and magazines are saying, click here.

UK Cover

Feb 2010
NZ Cover
NZ Cover

German Cover

French Cover