The crime fiction trilogy of Chameleon, Gecko and Goanna featuring the same central character, crusty detective, Hugh Morgan was written when Ian was living in Vanuatu. As with most successful novelists, Ian's first submissions have been met with polite rejection from publishers. One of the prerequisites to being a writer is to have a quite but healthy sense of self-belief and perseverance. JK Rowling and The Beatles were also initially rejected.

Ian is currently re-working Gecko and has written his memoirs, Black, White & Shades of Grey. Unless he shuffles off the perch in the near future, this will sit on the shelf/hard drive accumulating more chapters in the years to come.

Here, in the first two pages of Gecko, the reader is introduced to the murder victim, 22 characters (one of whom committed the crime) and the two protagonists who will drive the plot.

Jenny Hughes, at the head of the table, lifts her top to let what were once ample and proud breasts drop, and flop, into the balmy night air.

"Woo-hoo!" she warbles with a slur and a demonic glare to no one in particular.

The tourists in Port Vila's Waterfront Bar & Grill are bemused and intrigued. The expatriates are nonplussed. They've seen it before. Her breasts swing, pendulous, as the time ticks towards midnight.

Her husband, Ward, in pink shirt and clashing cravat, chats at the bar, flirtingly, with Rodney, the young man recently appointed to his accountancy firm.

Captain Klaus, the Austrian shipping and freight guru, moves his large, awkward frame down the table to sit next to Sandra McAlister, a thin-lipped, prim-and-proper paradox.

She is horny and ripe for the picking.

There is a splash.

The birthday boy, Roy Parkes, former Texan, former professional baseball player and soon-to-be former resort owner, climbs the ladder from the harbour, abusing the perpetrators who gave him the wishing-well push, unaware that his mobile phone sits in the sand among the sea urchins. The azure harbour, when dark, can hold many secrets.

Roy's leggy wife, Georgie, is also unaware. She is outside the toilet block with her tongue down the throat of Scott, the banker, one of the town's few eligible bachelors. Scott's bank is in the process of repossessing her husband's resort and, on Roy's 40th birthday, he needs all the help he can get.

Leo, the ‘Fish Pimp', in battered cap and shorts, straddles a bar stool in the corner and casts his ribald and exaggerated lines to a couple of full-of-awe tourists. In return for a beer or six, it is pretty much how he passes his tropical daze. Leo is fifty-one but has a birthday several times a week, sharing the occasion with strangers.

Leo's landlady, Cassandra Taylor, kava vendor, alcoholic, cocaine user and slut, pours a white wine, oblivious to exposed breasts, laughter and the wet Texan, and runs her hand shakily up the thigh of real estate agent Virginia Beck. It is not discouraged.

Cassandra 's 15-year-old daughter, Kylie, is downtown walking the street, not for money, but for company.

Kylie's father and Cassandra 's husband, Paul, is in a Brisbane hospital, recently quadriplegic, following a fall (or push) from the balcony at home following a drunken argument.

No one remembers.

All regret.

His helicopter charter business is no more.

Andrea Mackay cries drunken tears on the shoulder of Leslie Miller. Leslie cries, too, in empathy as well as for her own sadness. Leslie's husband, Don, shrugs, orders another beer and moves to the other side of Sandra McAlister, simply with the hope of conversation.

Andrea's partner, Greg Winslow, is currently in prison for lying on his application for residency. Greg shares a cell with his son, Rove, the lad from his first marriage.

Both have convictions for drug trafficking in Australia. Greg was a Gold Coast ‘baker', specialising in cooking up methamphetamines for fun and profit. Nothing wrong with that, they did their time but they didn't tell Customs. And they didn't tell Andrea. But, despite the initial shock, she dutifully drives her Mustang convertible to the prison daily to deliver lunch and support. She is yet to discover she is pregnant to Greg. Greg is yet to discover that his backers, in need of a laundry, are now nervous about trusting their ‘main man'. Fifteen million dollars is a lot in someone else's hands. The ‘investors' and their accountant wonder how much of that will have to go towards the ‘pardon'.

There are two invitees not in attendance. Marcello Ricchi, Italian tile magnate and retiree, was killed in a car accident the previous evening. His young wife, Gabriella, decided to remain at home and celebrate her grief alone.

The lapping of small waves and the clinking of masts are cut astern by the sound of bagpipes. John Mitchell, the Kiwi cowboy lawyer enters. He is naked but for the sporran covering his genitals. His mousy snout of a wife sniggers in the shadows through her nicotine-stained teeth.

"Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you…"

Just another night of expatriate bonding and celebration in the small, pretty harbourside town.

Across the Pacific, less than four hours away, Richard and Jane Alexander peck a goodnight kiss, confident in the knowledge that all has been packed and sent and that, in the morning, they will board a flight to Vanuatu… to a new beginning, to an adventure, to an enticing unknown.