AustLit

'In the early 1800s an evil demon came to Queensland's beautiful Wunyami Lake inside the body of a migrant worker employed by landowner Patrick Sullivan to dig his private canal at the northern end of Lake Wunyami. The canal gives the spherical lake a bottle shape and the neck is called Sullivan's Neck. The demon has murderous fun body hopping whenever a host died until the indigenous owners of the land intervened and called upon the haunted spirits of Lake Wunyami and their guardian warrigal spirit to imprison the evil foreign demon. Peace reigns for longer than a century until 1981 when the demon is accidentally released by a descendant of Patrick Sullivan and malice, murder and mayhem once again infects the good folk of Wunyami; by 2004 a demon possessed host has established a nation-wide drug network based in the Wunyami National Park rainforest and the Wunyami Crystal Caves. Detective Inspector Samuel Steadman of the Queensland Police Service arrives incognito in Wunyami on the day the local church minister's teenage daughter is strangled; Sam has bought a lakeside cottage in his guise as a retiree and he has taken long service leave to hunt down the Wunyami drug dealers who had his niece Kathy murdered in Brisbane. Danger and murder continue apace in Wunyami and he becomes involved with the powerful Sullivan family. Sam has trusted allies in his elderly next-door neighbour, two local indigenous elders and twelve year old precocious Jana Sullivan. Sam is forced to change his utter disbelief in the occult when he saves the lives of each of his allies. Sam Steadman has solved the killing of his niece and witnessed the destruction of the drug dealing empire and the death of the demon host but he will return often to Wunyami because he has a small but a terrifying suspicion that the evil demon may have body-hopped into a living body outside the Crystal Caves...Sam Steadman is now a firm believer in the occult.' (Publication summary)

'This devilish tale opens on a tiny speck of land in Queensland's beautiful Moreton Bay and ends in a fire-gutted church in South Brisbane. Scottish settlers in the 1800s named the tiny island Clootie, their Scottish name for Satan. A portal to Hell exists in a cave on Clootie. Blind Father Michael Brody lives with his dog Finn in Lime Bay on the foreshore of Moreton Bay. The priest was blinded six years ago by a demonic light when he attempted to wall off the Hell-gate to protect twelve year old Riley Kennedy from Asmodeus a powerful demon lord of Light who lusts for Riley's rare gift to converse with shadow beings. Riley is now eighteen years old and returns to Clootie on the Australia Day long weekend to exact vengeance for the murders of his mother and father by kelpie water-demons six years ago but the brick wall built by Father Brody to protect Riley is crumbling. Father Brody's demon fighting allies are; Finn his loyal cattle dog. Miriam, the spirit of a white witch, Merlin her cat and the Shadow Itzal who came from the Shadow world to guard Riley and his gift. Ranged against Father Brody is Asmodeus a powerful demon-lord with a demonic army and a dark magic cult. In struggles between Good and Evil the Good does not always emerge a victor as a group of visitors from Brisbane discover. Ben Stirling a business tycoon had no belief in the occult when he rented Hob House on Clootie for the holiday weekend. In his party are his business partner Jock McKee, Ben's widowed daughter Louise, his stepson Mitchell and Mitchell's glamourous unfaithful wife Tiffany and her latest 'friend' Simon Damone. As the body count rises Ben finally accepts reality of the occult on Clootie Island and he closes the Hell-gate in the cave with explosives. Asmodeus has a penchant for attractive red-haired human females and lovely flame-haired Louise Stirling is kidnapped by his human thrall to be a gift for his demon master, a wicked act that results in bloody sacrifice and a battle between Good and Evil to close another portal to Hell and this time the Hell-gate is in the ruins of a derelict church in Brisbane. Ben Stirling wonders how many more portals into Hell exist on Earth.' (Publication summary)

'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)