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Justice Machine
A small fortune falls from the sky when a cargo ship’s load tears open on a city wharf.
Lennie and Joe take it. They know where to hide it.
But luck has a habit of creating debts.
By day, they’re suburban electricians.
By night, they fix faults in the justice system — assisted by Rawcus, a pub-raised cockatoo with a cutting vocab and a gift for spotting "a rat with a gold tooth" at a glance.
When Lennie’s former parole officer arrives asking about the missing cash — flanked by men built like demolition equipment — past mistakes resurface and new enemies begin circling.
And that windfall isn’t their only problem.
A “trusted” financial adviser once convinced Lennie’s Aunty Doreen that money grew on trees — and left her with nothing but shame and an early grave. Lennie has a plan.
A sea voyage.
A small yacht named Flamingo Sky.
A tormentor who may not make it back to shore.
Justice, after all, requires action.
As Lennie
“A machine isn’t just a bunch of nuts and bolts. It’s a process that transforms things.”
Rawcus shuns Lennie's fancy ideas. "Ya dumb as a box o' hammers!"
Lennie and Joe take it. They know where to hide it.
But luck has a habit of creating debts.
By day, they’re suburban electricians.
By night, they fix faults in the justice system — assisted by Rawcus, a pub-raised cockatoo with a cutting vocab and a gift for spotting "a rat with a gold tooth" at a glance.
When Lennie’s former parole officer arrives asking about the missing cash — flanked by men built like demolition equipment — past mistakes resurface and new enemies begin circling.
And that windfall isn’t their only problem.
A “trusted” financial adviser once convinced Lennie’s Aunty Doreen that money grew on trees — and left her with nothing but shame and an early grave. Lennie has a plan.
A sea voyage.
A small yacht named Flamingo Sky.
A tormentor who may not make it back to shore.
Justice, after all, requires action.
As Lennie
“A machine isn’t just a bunch of nuts and bolts. It’s a process that transforms things.”
Rawcus shuns Lennie's fancy ideas. "Ya dumb as a box o' hammers!"
Audible Audio
Published March 7, 2026
About the author
Mark Furness
16 books12 followersHi. I'm a bestselling author of thrillers, mysteries, and dark comedy crime. I live in Sydney, Australia.
Before writing fiction, I worked as a foreign correspondent in the US, the UK, Australia, and East Asia. I draw on these experiences to inform my crime stories which often feature journalists.
My major novel featuring journalists is the international conspiracy thriller, Under Eden. While fiction, this three-part series has many parallels with the real and deadly world in which investigative journalists operate.
Unlike Gar, I did not carry a gun on the job. But there were occasions when that type of defence would have been handy. I might have gone in harder on my subject matter, as Gar does. Ha.
In creating my story, I considered the real perils faced by contemporary investigative journalists.
In Putin's Russia, the Communist Party's China, and the Kim family's North Korea, there is little dissent from the local media. Dictators who control the dark forces of the State are rarely sleepless about internal criticism.
External criticism is another matter. The Saudi Arabian regime, unhappy about its King and Prince being accused of corruption by dissident journalist and The Washington Post columnist, Jamal Khashoggi, lured him to the Saudi embassy in Istanbul, Turkey, where he was literally butchered a couple of years ago.
The Saudi's make Donald Trump's signature cry of 'Fake News' look like a soft approach to dealing with media critics.
But for plenty of powerful people, murder or 'disappearance' remain the ultimate methods to shut up journalists.
Of course, not all journalists are saints.
I've met a few who have taken a rich man's coin to publish good things about their subjects and ignore the dark. And there are others in the mould of the late American publisher Arthur Kasherman who portrayed himself as a "vice crusader" publishing fearless exposés about corruption and gangster rule. Others, however, called him a blackmailer who threatened to write defamatory articles about them if they didn't pay him off. Kasherman owned his own press, so he had a free hand to say whatever he wanted. Until he was shot dead while dining out.
If you read my stories, you'll find they're all veined with gritty, dark humour.
I can't be sure of the source of this. But as a 21-year-old, I flew a hang-glider into high voltage wires, sustaining electrical burns which left me hospitalized and in rehabilitation for over a year. My body still bears a few physical scars, but I believe my brain fully recovered. This belief is disputed by some of my friends and family members.
Most recently, I published, Justice Machine, Book #1 of a dark comedy crime thriller series titled Firefly Electrics. The books feature suburban electricians, Lennie and Joe, and a cockatoo named Rawcus, who fight on behalf of society's underdogs against corrupt elites of the Establishment.
The British Crime Writers Association Debut Dagger competition long-listed my international conspiracy thriller, with the working title FBEyes. It is a follow-on to Under Eden in which journalists uncover corruption at the high-tech frontier of the global arms industry. FBEyes is also slated for publication in late 2020.
You can learn more at: markfurnesswriter.com
All the best, Mark
Before writing fiction, I worked as a foreign correspondent in the US, the UK, Australia, and East Asia. I draw on these experiences to inform my crime stories which often feature journalists.
My major novel featuring journalists is the international conspiracy thriller, Under Eden. While fiction, this three-part series has many parallels with the real and deadly world in which investigative journalists operate.
Unlike Gar, I did not carry a gun on the job. But there were occasions when that type of defence would have been handy. I might have gone in harder on my subject matter, as Gar does. Ha.
In creating my story, I considered the real perils faced by contemporary investigative journalists.
In Putin's Russia, the Communist Party's China, and the Kim family's North Korea, there is little dissent from the local media. Dictators who control the dark forces of the State are rarely sleepless about internal criticism.
External criticism is another matter. The Saudi Arabian regime, unhappy about its King and Prince being accused of corruption by dissident journalist and The Washington Post columnist, Jamal Khashoggi, lured him to the Saudi embassy in Istanbul, Turkey, where he was literally butchered a couple of years ago.
The Saudi's make Donald Trump's signature cry of 'Fake News' look like a soft approach to dealing with media critics.
But for plenty of powerful people, murder or 'disappearance' remain the ultimate methods to shut up journalists.
Of course, not all journalists are saints.
I've met a few who have taken a rich man's coin to publish good things about their subjects and ignore the dark. And there are others in the mould of the late American publisher Arthur Kasherman who portrayed himself as a "vice crusader" publishing fearless exposés about corruption and gangster rule. Others, however, called him a blackmailer who threatened to write defamatory articles about them if they didn't pay him off. Kasherman owned his own press, so he had a free hand to say whatever he wanted. Until he was shot dead while dining out.
If you read my stories, you'll find they're all veined with gritty, dark humour.
I can't be sure of the source of this. But as a 21-year-old, I flew a hang-glider into high voltage wires, sustaining electrical burns which left me hospitalized and in rehabilitation for over a year. My body still bears a few physical scars, but I believe my brain fully recovered. This belief is disputed by some of my friends and family members.
Most recently, I published, Justice Machine, Book #1 of a dark comedy crime thriller series titled Firefly Electrics. The books feature suburban electricians, Lennie and Joe, and a cockatoo named Rawcus, who fight on behalf of society's underdogs against corrupt elites of the Establishment.
The British Crime Writers Association Debut Dagger competition long-listed my international conspiracy thriller, with the working title FBEyes. It is a follow-on to Under Eden in which journalists uncover corruption at the high-tech frontier of the global arms industry. FBEyes is also slated for publication in late 2020.
You can learn more at: markfurnesswriter.com
All the best, Mark
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