- This edition read as an e-book on my Kindle
- ASIN : B0DPGPBPG5
- Publisher : HQ Fiction, Publication date : June 1, 2025, Harper Collins
- Print length : 419 pages
- ISBN-13 : 978-1867270898
Synopsis (Amazon)
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 murder.
Renee Taylor is planning to stay the minimum amount of time in her remote hometown - only as long as her mum needs her, then she is fleeing back to her real life in Brisbane.
Seconded to the town's sleepy police station, Renee is pretty sure work will hold nothing more exciting than delivering speeding tickets. Then a murdered woman is found down by the creek on the outskirts of town.
Leading the investigation, Renee uncovers a perplexing connection to the disappearance of two young women thirty years earlier. As she delves deeper and the mystery unfurls, intergenerational cruelties, endemic racism, and deep corruption show themselves, even as dark and bitter truths about the town and its inhabitants' past rise up and threaten to overwhelm the present...
Authentic, gripping crime drama from a bright new voice in fiction.
My Take
A detective in Brisbane, Renee Taylor has taken an appointment as a constable in the small outback Queensland town she grew up in, coming home to care for her mother.
She is only back at work for a few days when a young woman's body turns up near a creek on the outskirts of town. Nobody comes forward to identify the girl, no-one has seen her before. Doing some research Renee comes across the story of two aboriginal girls who disappeared thirty years earlier, and from then on the story continues in two time frames. Renee becomes the detective in charge of the current murder case and the author presents the story of the two missing girls. In some ways Renee doesn't know as much as we the readers do.
Although the camp that the girls had lived in has long gone, their families are still in the town, and in some ways attitudes have not changed much over the thirty years. An engaging novel with some interesting threads.
Be sure to read the Author Note at the end of the novel.
My rating: 4.5
About the author
Angie Faye Martin is a writer and editor of Kooma, Kamilaroi and European heritage. With a Bachelor of Public Health from the Queensland University of Technology and a Masters of Anthropology from the Australian National University, Angie spent many years working in policy roles in state and federal government before launching Versed Writings in 2019. Her work has been published in Meanjin, Garland, The Saltbush Review and The Rocks Remain. She is a member of the First Nations Australia Writers Network and accredited with the Institute of Professional Editors. Melaleuca is her debut novel.
