Perth

Inspector Cloud Maslin investigates a murder in a prosperous leafy suburb, where the genteel sheen seems to have an underlayer of seedy distrust. The subtle stink of decadence and immorality is disturbing, when inhaled among beautiful antiques and family silver. What secrets are to be unearthed in Claremont?

Maslin takes on a new partner, Senior Sergeant Martina Williams. His fiancee leaves him for reasons he's known for some time. His peace of mind is rattled by a baffling case with a shattering conclusion.

With a gentle tug, the silk scarf covering her eyes fell away.  Her beaming smile froze clown like as she took in his malevolent expression.  Then she heard the humming emanating from the box at his feet. Innate fear paralysed her senses as she watched him reach down and unhinge the catch, releasing the myriad of frenzied and buzzing insects from captivity. The swarming mass burst forth in a dense, pulsating cloud.

It's January 1943. Australia is at war and Perth is buzzing.

US troops have permanently docked in the city in what local men refer to bitterly as the American occupation, and Perth women are having the time of their lives. The Americans have money, accents like movie stars, smart tailored uniforms and good manners. What's more, they love to dance and show a girl a good time, and young women are throwing caution to the wind and pushing social boundaries with their behaviour.

Just out of the big house, Rick is a good natured ex-crim with a plan to franchise a chain of cafes based on a prison theme. To finance his dream, he borrows from a low-life drug dealer and full-time paranoid, Guthrie. But moments before he is due to pay off his debt to Guthrie, his estranged wife cleans out his bank account.

"Jesus Christ. I found one." These words, blurted over the phone to Constable Snowy Lane, signalled the beginning of a series of events which were to reverberate in his life and shake Perth to its foundations. It was 1979. Mr Gruesome had taken another victim and all of Perth was riveted by the emergence of the dark side of the City of Light. Snowy Lane, first as a young cop, then as a private detective, finds himself inextricably linked with Mr Gruesome and the human and political power plays that unfold against the excess and corruption of the 1980s.

Blurb About the Book

When DSS Stevie Hooper steps into the empty Pavel house and someeone else's jurisdiction, she upsets more than the ego of a struggling suburban cop.

She has breached the defences of a ruthless group that has at its rotten heart a disregard for human life.

With her own family in crisis, the last thing Stevie needs is Skye, a driven young nurse, insisting she investigate the case.  But when Skye turns up dead, Stevie knows she can't rest till she's avenged her friend's death.

Blurb About the Book

The victims are young, beautiful women, their bodies left posed like mannequins in public places. The first is painted bronze, the next silver... who is the gold for? And what is the significance of the words Easeful Death, from a poem by Keats, that appear hand painted on the bodies of the victims?

Blurb About the Book

You can run from anything... but your fears. When Sergeant Cam Fraser thinks the gang who murdered his wife and son are targeting his daughter, he relocates to the other side of Australia, not expecting trouble in the small country town where he was raised. But a violent, puzzling murder at an exclusive girls' college plunges him into a baffling and deadly investigation - raises menacing ghosts from his past. Taut and creepy debut crime novel from rising Australian author.

Blurb from the Book

When a brothel madam is shot on a Perth golf course in 1975 it should be a routine murder enquiry. But it isn't. In fact there's barely an investigation at all, and Superintendent Swann thinks he knows why. Heroin is the new drug in town and the money is finding its way into some very respectable hands.