AustLit

'On Saturday 31st October 1998 a sex-worker died in the inner Brisbane suburb of Woolloongabba with her head inside a plastic bag. The media surmised that Halloween had activated a switch in a warped psyche but events are seldom what they seem in this smoke and mirror tale of murder and madness and the body count continued to rise. During the next ten months five more working girls die a breathless death and the name Bagman appears in the media but the murders may be the work of a new crime cartel that is intent on controlling the recently legalised sex-trade in the river city. A CD filled with stolen cartel data falls into the hands of private investigator Mac McNab as he watches River Fire pyrotechnics at Southbank Parklands with his young grandson Paul. Mac hides the CD before he is murdered by the cartel and days later the cartel kidnaps seven years old Paul who is soon rescued by Mac's colleagues but the shadowy Bagman does exist and the serial killer is obsessed with single mother Cassie McNab and her son Paul. Murder and madness rise to a crescendo on Halloween night 1999 when Cassie is drugged and wakes in a bed beside a mummified corpse wearing green pyjamas.' (Publication summary)