Showing results by publisher "Wavesound from W. F. Howes Ltd" in Crime Fiction

In Riversend, an isolated country town brought to its knees by endless drought, a charismatic and dedicated young priest steps out of his church and calmly opens fire on his congregation, killing five parishioners before being shot dead himself. A year later, troubled journalist Martin Scarsden arrives in Riversend to write a feature on the anniversary of the tragedy. But the stories he hears from the locals about the priest and incidents leading up to the shooting don't fit with the accepted version of events his own newspaper reported in an award-winning investigation.

Wyatt robs banks and payroll vans. Most men like him are dead or in jail, but Wyatt stamps a cold, pitiless style on his heists and has never been caught. Now his funds are low and his luck is running out - until the day Anna Reid explains about the kickback in her partner’s safe. But other players are involved. In Wyatt’s world, there is no yielding, no redemption, and when he’s crossed, the outcome is inevitable.

It hasn't rained in Kiewarra for two years. Tensions in the farming community become unbearable when three members of the Hadler family are discovered shot to death on their property. Everyone assumes Luke Hadler committed suicide after slaughtering his wife and six-year-old son. Federal Police investigator Aaron Falk returns to his hometown for the funerals and is unwillingly drawn into the investigation. As suspicion spreads through the town, Falk is forced to confront the community that rejected him 20 years earlier.

When Senior Detective Antigone Pollard moves to the coastal town of Deception Bay, she is still in shock and grief. Back in Melbourne, one of her cases had gone catastrophically wrong, and to escape the guilt and the haunting memories, she'd requested a transfer to the quiet town she'd grown up in. But there are some things you can't run from. A month into her new life, she is targeted by a would-be rapist at the pub, and realises why there have been no convictions following a spate of similar sexual attacks in the surrounding district.

A summer of relentless heat. A local surfer named Ray Carlson is found dead in a house not far from Portsea back beach. There’s a silver-handled kitchen knife deep in his chest, and blood everywhere. Detective Sergeant Zoe Mayer is scarcely back from extended leave and still wrestling with her demons, but she is assigned the case, alongside her new service dog, Harry, whose instincts help her in unexpected ways.

People come to Hades Archer to dispose of their 'problems' - for a fee. But one night he makes a decision that will change everything. Twenty years later, homicide detective Frank Bennett meets his new partner, the dark and beautiful Eden Archer. But there's something strange about Eden and her brother, Eric. Something he can't quite put his finger on. And as they race to catch a serial killer, Frank starts to wonder if she's as dangerous as the man they hunt.

Steels Creek is an idyllic retreat in the Sunshine Coast hinterland. It's a place where everyone knows their neighbors and no one locks their doors. Investigative journalist Lars Nilsson who has moved to the settlement following a public fall from grace is trying to live a quiet life far from the crime reporting he was once feted for. But when a backpacker's body is found floating in a nearby waterhole and hours later his best friend's daughter is reported missing, Lars is compelled to investigate, putting him back in the cross-hairs of police.

'Jesus Christ. I found one.' These words are blurted over the phone to Constable Snowy Lane, who is preoccupied with no more than a ham sandwich and getting a game with the East Fremantle league side on Saturday. They signal the beginning of a series of events that are to shake Perth to its foundations. It is 1979, and Perth is jumping with pub bands and overnight millionaires. 'Mr Gruesome' has just taken another victim. Snowy's life and career are to be forever changed by the grim deeds of a serial killer and the dark bloom spreading across the City of Light.

Charlie Jardim has just trashed his legal career in a spectacular courtroom meltdown, and his girlfriend has finally left him. So when a colleague slings him a prosecution brief for the remote coastal town of Dauphin, Charlie reluctantly agrees to go. The case is murder. The victim was involved in illegal abalone trading and even more illegal drug trafficking. And the witnesses aren't talking. As Dauphin closes ranks around him, Charlie finds his interest in the law powerfully reignited.

Rowland Sinclair is an artist and a gentleman. In Australia's 1930s, the Sinclair name is respectable and influential, yet Rowland has a talent for scandal. He relies on the Sinclair fortune to indulge his artistic passions and friends: a poet, a painter and a brazen sculptress. Mounting tensions fuelled by the Great Depression take Australia to the brink of revolution, but Rowland Sinclair is indifferent to the politics...until a brutal murder exposes an extraordinary and treasonous conspiracy.

Taut and crackling with character, these gritty, raw and sometimes very funny stories from Australian great Bryan Brown are Aussie noir at its best. Crime doesn't discriminate...it can happen to anyone...it could happen to you...in any ordinary suburb, at any time.

In the wild coastal town of Merritt, Alex Tillerson and her mother make a shocking find on the beach. The police claim it’s an accidental death, but there are whispers of murder and that it is not the first. Bella Greggs was found dead at the bottom of a ravine but drowned in salt water. Maxine McFarlane was pulled from the ocean but with no water in her lungs. Black feathers were found with both bodies, but what do they mean?

Most police duos run on trust and their shared desire to see killers standing up in court. But Detective Frank Bennett's partner, the enigmatic Eden Archer, offers him darkness and danger. She doesn't mind catching killers - but it's not the courthouse where her justice is served. As Eden heads undercover to work on a remote farm - a place linked to three missing girls - Frank's priority is to monitor her 24-7, but is it for Eden's protection or to protect their suspects from her?

Everyone dies famous in a country town, but glamorous Vanessa Walton was a shining star. A celebrity since a television commercial when she was a child, Vanessa is back on the front page for all the wrong reasons; after a terrible storm she has been found dead at the bottom of her stairs. At first her death seems to be a simple accident, but anonymous letters are discovered that suggest otherwise–and when 16-year-old Jasmine Landridge claims it is murder, she suddenly disappears. As the police begin to investigate, secrets are exposed and friendships unravel.

Twenty years ago, ornithology student Jessica Weston filmed a lyrebird mimicking the dying screams of a woman in the Barrington Tops National Park. Terrified, she took her recordings to the Maitland police to report a murder. Despite support from newly minted detective, Megan Blaxland, no one was reported missing in the area and no body found, so Jessica's claims were mocked and dismissed. Twenty years later, a body is unearthed. Exactly where Jessica said it would be.

A fire, a missing man and his dog send Dave and his partner Bob Holden south of Perth, to investigate. Leo Perry has been missing for two days when they realize he's probably not dead. In fact he's more likely to have left his life in exchange for a new one. But why? They find CCTV footage showing them that Leo is alive, only two days earlier, but then disaster strikes. A phone call from the Meekatharra Police station changes everything that Dave and Bob already know about the case.

Hal and his little brother have just come to live in Moorabool. They're exploring the creek near their new home when they find the body of a dog. Not just dead, but killed. Not just killed, but horribly maimed. Constable Mick Goodenough, recently demoted from his big-city job as a detective, is also new in town—and one of his dogs has gone missing. Like other pets around the town. He knows what it means when someone tortures animals to death. They're practicing. When Hal's mother starts getting late-night phone calls, Goodenough, alone among the Moorabool cops, takes her seriously.

Darren has two big talents: cricket and trouble. It is no surprise, then, that he becomes an Australian sporting star of the bad-boy variety - one of those men who's always got away with things and just keeps going...until the day we meet him, middle aged and in the boot of a car, and everything pointing towards a shallow grave.

On her lunch break in Melbourne, Kim Leamy is approached by a stranger investigating the disappearance of a little girl from her Kentucky home 28 years earlier. He believes Kim is that girl. At first she brushes it off but soon finds herself questioning her family history and begins to unravel an unexpectedly dark past.

Olivia is hiding from vicious media and online scrutiny in a remote Tasmanian house when an unknown man knocks on her door, seeking Pippa, a woman who once lived there. His father, Jeremy, has died, leaving behind a letter for the unknown woman. Olivia wants to help, but can she risk revealing her own sordid past and exposure to the world once more?