Robert Groobelaar is Meg's boss and he believes the police have the wrong man. He wants to find out as much information about the events leading up to her murder as possible believing that some powerful people may be getting away with a terrible crime. He turns to Marian Wendell and her private investigation agency to find out what happened and Wendell decides that it would be the perfect case for Makedde Vanderwall to handle.

Mak Vanderwall is, on the surface, a lively, upbeat go-getter who exudes confidence and capability. Underneath lie the scars and insecurities borne from some horrific encounters from previous cases (chronicled in Fetish, Split and Covet). Her personal relationship with policeman boyfriend Andy Flynn seems to be in a constant state of flux due in part to his disapproval of her job and partly because she has already turned a marriage proposal down.

Faced with very little to go on, Mak starts out by visiting Meg's parents to try to get some idea about her life before she died. She discovers that the man charged with her murder is actually her cousin and that she has been loaning him money every fortnight, the idea that he might murder her is looking more and more remote. She also finds that Meg was making more money than her job as a real estate agent would normally pull down. Digging a little deeper takes her to a Melbourne strip club and then on into various brothels and bondage establishments slipping into the sleazy side of life inhabited by all sorts of night crawlers.

While Mak marches through her investigation, Jack Cavanaugh doesn't sit still. Someone has attempted to blackmail him over the footage captured by Meg and his primary instinct is to go into immediate damage control. Enter the frightening Luther Hand, an irresistible force in the form of one of the most effective hit men on the planet. It's his job to clean up the mess for his employer, a job that he takes on without delay. Right from the outset it becomes obvious that his path will cross with Mak's, it's just a question of when and where.

The story moves along at an uneven pace as the action is tempered by the saga of Mak's personal life. It is unusual that the scenes involving a book's protagonist are the ones that feel as though they drag, but that's the case here. While Mak dithers about her investigation, throughout which we are treated to an in-depth summary of her every emotion, Luther Hand is going about his work with deadly efficiency. As terrible as his brutality is, in terms of readability, the scenes involving Luther flow with uncomplicated ease and are easily the more engrossing.

For a book of over 450 pages in length, the ending is extremely disappointing, finishing with a whimper rather than the expected bang. The police work is laughably sloppy with leads not followed and suspicious police behaviour not questioned and never really addressed. As the story is wrapped up and there are more questions left unanswered than answered I was left scratching my head trying to work out the point of the story.

With a flourish of gaping plot holes and unexplained and untidied loose threads the story finishes with an obvious teaser of more to come in the next book in the series (whenever that will be). Unfortunately, because so very little is resolved in Hit there isn't significant motivation to pick up the next book. Perhaps the book should be retitled Glancing Blow.

One gets the feeling that Mak Vanderwall will continue to develop slowly as a private investigator and along the way, her persona will also continue to be developed. This is all well and good, the important box that must be checked along the way is that the investigations in which she is involved should be taken to completion and, unfortunately, such is not the case with Hit.