NEW

Constable Paul Hirschhausen runs a one-cop station in a small, dusty South Australian town. He’s still new in town, but the community work—welfare checks,  working bees, playing Santa—is starting to pay off. Now Christmas is here and, apart from a grass fire, stolen utes and Brenda Flann entering the pub without exiting her car, Hirsch’s life has been peaceful. Until a strange, vicious incident sends a ripple of violence through the community. Suddenly, it doesn’t look like a season of goodwill at all.

Hirsch is a whistle-blower. Formerly a metropolitan officer, he’s been exiled to a one-cop station in South Australia’s wheatbelt. When he heads up Bitter Wash Road to investigate gunfire, he’s cut off without backup. There are two possibilities. Either he’s found the fugitive killers thought to be in the area. Or his ‘backup’ is about to put a bullet in him. He’s wrong on both counts. But the events that unfold turn out to be a lot more sinister.

The young detectives call Detective Alan Auhl a retread, but that doesn’t faze him. He’s always done things his own way and gets results—even if his cases are colder now. Like the skeleton discovered under a concrete slab. Or the old farmer, dead five years, whose death his daughters don’t believe was an accident. Or the doctor who’s murdered two wives and a girlfriend and left no evidence at all. Auhl will stick with these cases until justice is done. One way or another.