The theft of a valuable diamond necklace, and the death by apparent suicide of a notorious film star, have nothing in common. Nothing except Detective Franz Heineken, aka Pufferfish, scourge of an island’s villains and a deadly match for it unpredictable, unsettling crimes.
At the tail end of an oppressively hot Tasmanian summer, Pufferfish is called upon to investigate a death that looks like a suicide and small like suicide. But Rory Stillrock, once a big screen Hollywood bad boy - popular celluloid CIA agent real life party animal and sex addict - had good reason to live. His hidden southern Tasmanian mansion, and those who were closest to him and his wealth, slowly, reluctantly, begin to offer up clues. Not that Pufferfish is in a hurry...
Meanwhile he knows very well who nicked the diamond necklace valued at over two hundred thousand dollars, from a stately Hobart home. Just a small matter of proving same. Not easy when you’re up against Fink Mountgarrett, master thief with a very soft footprint. But the patient task becomes incendiary when Fink falls foul of the island’s controversial new mandatory sentencing laws. Was he set up? Surely Pufferfish wouldn’t stoop so low...