Australian Crime Fiction

DS Lucas Walker is back home in Queensland, following the dramatic fallout from his last case. He is just getting to grips with his new role in the small outback town of Katima, when the body of an unknown young man is found hanging from a tree in the park. What at first looks like a tragic suicide soon has Walker's detective instincts on alert, and he and his young partner throw themselves into the case - discovering a connection with an unsolved death.

And then a brutal murder changes everything. The victim is Caden Conroy, national cricketing hero, and the dark nature of his death leads to an unparallelled media frenzy. When Walker is sidelined by Brisbane Homicide after being first on the scene, he must go his own way to unpick the deceit and corruption at the heart of these cases.

Only then will he know if they are connected, and how - but at what cost?

He had been here, that was clear from the marks in the dust. And he had been alone.

In a dying town, Ro Crowley waits for her son on the evening of his twenty-first birthday. Sam never comes home. His footprints in the dust of three abandoned houses offer the only clue to his final movements.

One set in. One set out. Five long years later, Ro returns to Carralon Ridge for the annual memorial of Sam’s disappearance.

The skeletal community is now an echo of itself, having fractured under the pressure of the coal mine operating on its outskirts. But Ro still wants answers. Only a few people remain.

If the truth is to be found in that town, does it lie among them?

The indefatigable Miss Phryne Fisher returns to solve what may be her most puzzling murder. When Phryne Fisher is invited to Bendigo to witness the investiture of her old friend Lionel, who is being made a Bishop, her expectations of the solemn and dignified ceremony do not include a murder. Phryne is soon working with perspicacious local Constable Watson and eagle-eyed Inspector Mick Kelly to identify the perpetrator.

It becomes quickly apparent the murder victim had been an overzealous deacon with a nose for trouble. Nobody seems very inclined to mourn his passing. Applying her quick wits and magnetic charm, Phryne and her expanding team of sleuths discover murky layers of church politics, social scandals and business scams and blackmail.

Soon, various suspects begin to form a long list, all with excellent motives for killing the deacon. Could the murderer be his own wife? A visiting dignitary? The mysterious organist? The angelic Brookes? The unemployed teacher? And why is the Bishop's Court being burgled?

Meanwhile the clock is ticking ... Will Phryne be able to bring to light the proof she needs before the killer strikes again or disappears completely?

It's the worst drought in a generation, and the people of Senior Constable Paul Hirschhausen's vast outback beat are suffering.

Foreclosures. Failing businesses. Petty quarrels that are spiralling out of control.

So when a naïve tourist runs into a ditch beyond the ruins of Mischance Creek, Hirsch is relieved to step away from Tiverton. But Annika Nordrum asks for more than just roadside assistance. Her father's body was found at the bottom of a mineshaft seven years ago - his death ruled an accident - and her mother hasn't been seen since.

Can Hirsch close this cold case before the town reaches breaking point?

Australia, 1979. It's the height of summer and on a quiet suburban cul-de-sac a housewife is scrubbing the yellow and white chequered tiles of her bathroom floor. But all is not as it seems.

For one thing, it's 3 a.m. For another, she is trying desperately to remove all traces of blood before they stain. Her husband seems remarkably calm, considering their neighbour has just been murdered.

As the sun rises on Warrah Place, news of Antonio Marietti's death spreads like wildfire, gossip is exchanged in whispers and suspicion mounts. Twelve-year-old Tammy launches her own investigation, determined to find out what happened, but she is not the only one whose well-meaning efforts uncover more mysteries than they solve. There are secrets behind every closed door in the neighbourhood - and the identity of the murderer is only one of them ...

Mary Fortune's dramatic crime stories, set in colonial-era Australia, comprise the first detective fiction series written by a woman; they also provide a vivid account of life and death in a country in rapid flux, as the huge population increase following the discovery of gold in 1851 led to great riches for some, poverty and violence for others.

Born in Ireland in 1832, Fortune emigrated to Australia during the goldrush, which she observed first-hand and depicted in many of her stories. A bigamous marriage to a policeman gave her inside knowledge to write about crime, and over the next 40 years she produced more than 500 stories, serialized under the title The Detective's Album in the mass-circulation magazine The Australian Journal. She tackled subjects such as murder, armed robbery, bootlegging, and sexual violence with a frankness unprecedented for a woman in the 19th century.

This book collects 18 of Fortune's finest stories, while also showcasing her range as a writer-from melodrama and Gothic horror to social realism and what we now call noir. Mary Fortune lived a precarious existence-repeatedly jailed for public drunkenness, homeless on occasion, unable to prevent her illegitimate son George drifting into a life of crime. She preserved her privacy by publishing under pseudonyms, most commonly 'Waif Wander' (or 'W.W.')-it is a measure of her fame at the time that a racehorse and a greyhound were both named after Waif Wander. But her anonymity meant that when she died in 1911, she was almost lost to literary history. Only recently has her true identity and her extraordinary life story emerged.

Edited by Lucy Sussex and Megan Brown.