Make-Up For Murder

Mother Paul, the incomparable nun-detective, is faced with her most perplexing case when a former pupil at her convent school is murdered at their annual reunion.Read more
Sorted on book title (not in series order)

Mother Paul, the incomparable nun-detective, is faced with her most perplexing case when a former pupil at her convent school is murdered at their annual reunion.Read more

When a boarding master at an exclusive boys’ school is shot dead, it is deemed accidental. A lazy and usually drunk detective is sent to write up the report. Cardilini unexpectedly does not cooperate, as he becomes riled by the privileged arrogance of those at the school. He used to have...Read more

One fine March day in 1868, gunshots rang out at a society charity event in Sydney's harbourside suburb of Clontarf. In the aftermath, Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh - son of Queen Victoria - lay close to death, while the assembled crowd seized and beat his attacker, Irish-born Henry James O'...Read more

It's no secret that the people who hire Hardy have nowhere else to turn.
Take Lady Catherine Chatterton, widow of the eminent judge. She's desperate to hand down the mantle of her husband's legal reign (not to mention the money) to someone more deserving than her boozy daughter...Read more

Times are tough for Samson Ryder, a Melbourne-based, Anglo-Indian private investigator who likes his facts cold and his curries hot.
A secret guilt over the death of his sister has left him guarded and closed, costing him his relationship with his girlfriend, his parents and...Read more

Robodebt was a new debt-creation system that was used to illegally pursue close to half a million Australian welfare recipients for fake debts generated by the thousands. It was described by the Royal Commission's report as a 'massive failure of public administration' caused by 'venality,...Read more

Forensic psychiatrist Natalie King works with victims and perpetrators of violent crime. Women with a history of abuse, mainly. She rides a Ducati a size too big and wears a tank top a size too small. Likes men but doesn’t want to keep one. And really needs to stay on her medication. Now...Read more

A country town, a brutal murder, a shameful past, a reckoning to come... The injustices of the past and dangers of the present envelop Aboriginal policewoman Renee Taylor, when her unwilling return to the small outback town of her childhood plunges her into the investigation of a brutal...Read more
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Crikey owner and ex-News Corp and Fairfax editor lifts the lid on the abuse of power by media moguls – from William Randolph Hearst to Elon Musk – and on his own unique experience of working for (and being sued by) the Murdochs.
What’s...Read more

A literary detective story ingeniously told in ten cases. John Dorn is a classic gumshoe. His woman has left him, he lives in his office, and he drinks too much. His one friend, a lawyer named Demetri, hands Dorn an infinite supply of hopeless cases and lost causes, to which Dorn, ever the...Read more

In early 1933, Rowland Sinclair and his companions are ensconced in the superlative luxury of The Hydro Majestic - Medlow Bath, where trouble seems distant indeed.
And then Harry Simpson vanishes.
Croquet and pre-dinner cocktails are abandoned for the High Country...Read more

Born in the middle of Australia’s biggest-ever earthquake, Miracle is fourteen when her world crumbles. Thanks to her dad’s new job at Compassionate Cremations — which falls under suspicion for Boorunga’s spate of sudden deaths — the entire town turns against their family. Miracle is...Read more

'The cloth that was over his head and tied tightly around his neck smelt like the army disposal store he'd been with his father. Lying on the floor of the van, hands tied behind his back, he closed his eyes and breathed in the kerosene-like scent of the sack, and he wished he was back...Read more

Hirsch is checking firearms. The regular police all weapons secured, ammo stored separately, no unauthorised person with keys to the gun safe. He’s checking people, too. The drought is hitting hard in the mid-north, and Hirsch is responsible for the welfare of his scattered flock of...Read more

Sydney, Australia.
Bonnie Hunter is done with creeps who treat their families like possessions. Sidelined and angry after a domestic violence call-out went horribly wrong, the detective finds herself seconded to a team tasked with finding a missing young woman.
...Read more

In 1992, toddler Yasmin Munoz goes missing from a rainforest picnic spot near Cairns. No trace of her has ever been found. Yet in 2012, Andrew Todd, a wealthy businessman and former mayor of Cairns, dies, and leaves in his will directions for a search for the missing child, who if she is...Read more

Never underestimate a tea lady.
Sydney, 1968. When a popular local man is murdered, police are quick to pin the blame on his glamorous model fiancée, who has since disappeared. But Hazel suspects a criminal cover-up and rallies the tea ladies to investigate; a...Read more

Hitchhiking along the Hume Highway, a woman searches for the man who killed her daughter. Her only clue - left in her daughter's final phone message - is that the man has a tattoo on his left arm saying "Die Mother"
With her daughter dead and with nothing to live for, the...Read more

Just like the garden, the fuse box, the bills, bin night and blown light bulbs, this was just something else she'd now have to take care of herself.
Recently widowed, Miriam Duffy is a respectable North Shore real estate agent and devoted mother and grandmother. She was...Read more

Ambitious criminal defence barrister Robyn Palmer gets her first big break when she's briefed as junior counsel in a high-profile murder trial. Unfortunately, her leader has lecherous designs and their client looks guilty as hell. However, nothing is going to stop her starring in the...Read more

Seven Australian soldiers, carousing in Paris in 1918, unknowingly witness a murder, with devastating consequences. Ten years later, two are dead...under very suspicious circumstances. Phryne (pronounced Fry-Knee, to rhyme with briny) Fisher's friends, Bert and Cec (sometimes cabbies and...Read more

Melbourne, 1868. When dazzling theatre star Marie St Denis dies in the arms of her best friend, fellow actress Lola Sanchez, everyone believes it was suicide by laudanum overdose. Everyone except Lola. On the brink of stardom herself, she risks everything by embarking on a...Read more

It's Christmas, and Phryne has an invitation to the Last Best party of 1928, a four-day extravaganza being hosted at the Werribee Manor House by the Golden Twins, Isabella and Gerald Templar. Phryne is of two minds about going. But when threats begin arriving in the mail, she promptly...Read more

Doctor Jack Nugent never liked looking at dead people and he hated touching them. In spite of this, he acquired detailed knowledge as to what happened to human remains. In the small community of Utopia, in the middle of Australia, he'd picked up skills he simply never could have learned...Read more

Accustomed to both murder and dalliance, Australia's favourite detective, the inimitable Miss Fisher, returns in a case that will test her tact and judgement to the full.
When the redoubtable Miss Phryne Fisher receives threatening letters at her home, she enlists the unflappable...Read more