AustLit

'A serial killer is on the loose in a small coastal town near Melbourne, Australia. Detective Inspector Hal Challis and his team must apprehend him before he strikes again. But first, Challis has to contend with the editor of a local newspaper who undermines his investigation at every turn, and with his wife, who attempts to resurrect their marriage through long-distance phone calls from a sanitarium, where she has been committed for the past eight years for attempted murder—his.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Soho Crime ed.).

'A missing two-year-old girl, an unidentified drowning victim, arson, and the threat of murder bring Homicide Squad Inspector Hal Challis of the Mornington Peninsula Police Force and his staff to Bushrangers Bay, an Australian seaside resort outside Melbourne. Allis not idyllic in this resort community—far from it. Cars are stolen and torched; letter boxes are burned; and the Kittyhawk airplane of an attractive aerial photographer suffers malicious damage.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Soho Crime ed.).

'It takes months for Australian social psychologist Janine McQuarrie to succumb to her husband’s pressure to attend spouse-swapping parties, but eventually she gives in. Then, driving with her young daughter one day, she gets out of her car to ask directions and is shot and killed. The little girl escapes when the gunman’s pistol misfires.

'Inspector Hal Challis of the Crime Investigation Unit is assigned the case, but his efforts are thwarted by his boss. The dead woman was Superintendent McQuarrie’s daughter-in-law, and he seems to be more interested in protecting his son than in finding his daughter-in-law’s murderer. Who might have a motive to kill this attractive young wife and mother? One of her clients? One of the swingers she’d gotten together with at a party? Or, the obvious suspect, her husband?'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Soho Crime ed.).

'Hal Challis is 1000 kilometres away from the Peninsula, watching his father die. Ellen Destry is left to mind his house for a month. And his job.

'Katie Blasko, aged nine, has disappeared. Ellen fears abduction-the Peninsula is sleepy, picturesque, prosperous, but she suspects the existence of a paedophile ring. Superintendent McQuarrie scoffs: the girl came from the Seaview Estate, notorious for broken homes and truancy. Ellen's team investigates. They find suspects, but an officer is murdered and his witness discredited. They find DNA evidence, but the sample is contaminated. Who can Ellen trust, when lawyers, judges and police officers might be involved?

'Meanwhile, Challis feels out of time and place in the remote outback town of his youth. Past failures haunt him; his father is dying slowly and bitterly; and Homicide Squad detectives have arrived from the city to question his sister about a murder. Challis can cope with being warned off. He can cope with his father. But soon the past catches with him.' (Publication summary)

'When hordes of eighteen-year-olds descend on the Peninsula to celebrate the end of exams, the overstretched police of Waterloo know what to expect. Party drugs, public drunkenness; maybe even drink-spiking and sexual assault.

'What they don't count on is a brutal bashing that turns political. The victim is connected. And for Detective Inspector Hal Challis, newly embarked on a relationship with his sergeant, Ellen Destry, this is not the best time to have the brass on his back. Especially when a bludgeoned corpse is found outside town and it becomes clear something much darker than adolescent craziness is going down.' (From the publisher's website.)

'A small bushfire, but nasty enough for ice cooks to abandon their lab. Fatal, too. But when the bodies in the burnt-out Mercedes prove to be a pair of Sydney hitmen, Inspector Hal Challis's inquiries into a local ice epidemic take a darker turn. Meanwhile, Ellen Destry, head of the new sex crimes unit, finds herself not only juggling the personalities of her team but hunting a serial rapist who leaves no evidence behind. The seventh instalment in Garry Disher's celebrated Peninsula Crimes series sets up new challenges, both professional and personal, for Challis and Destry. And Disher delivers with all the suspense and human complexity for which readers love him.' (Publication summary)