Australian Detective Mysteries

Stacey and Laney are twins—mirror images of each other—and yet they’re as different as the sun and the moon. Stacey works hard at school, determined to get out of their small town. Laney skips school and sneaks out of the house to meet her boyfriend. But when Laney disappears one night, Stacey can’t believe she’s just run off without telling her. As the days pass and Laney doesn’t return, Stacey starts dreaming of her twin. The dreams are dark and terrifying, difficult to understand and hard to shake, but at least they tell Stacey one key thing—Laney is alive.

Beneath the sun-drenched opulence of Cairns' French consulate, where gossip bubbles like champagne and secrets swim deeper than the Great Coral Sea, a shocking tableau unfolds. Madame Monet, the captivating Honorary Consul, lies strangled in her silk-swathed bedroom, a pair of Givenchy stockings twisted around her elegant throat. Canberra dispatches their finest: Inspectors, Harry Chin a whirlwind of Savile Row tailoring and razor-sharp deductions, and at his side stands Ash Friday, an aboriginal tracker whose eyes can pierce through the darkest shadows lurking beneath. As they navigate the...

As Inspector Lestrade asks "why, gentlemen, would someone break into a house, murder the owner and then steal only one volume of an Australian atlas, when all three volumes were there for the taking," more atlases are stolen before Holmes solves the mystery.

A young woman is found dead in her isolated town house in rural Red Creek, an up-and-coming wine tourism destination outside Sydney. No forced entry. No signs of struggle. And her geologist husband has an alibi, though it’s not exactly solid. While a tabloid journalist is quick to spin her own damning narrative, homicide detective Rose Riley is questioning everything she sees—especially in a rapidly developing community that already seems on edge.

Cyrus Haven and Evie Cormac return in this “expertly paced and psychologically acute” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) thriller from Michael Robotham that’s “one of his best, suspenseful and hard to put down” (Stephen King). Twenty years ago, Cyrus Haven survived a family massacre. The...

They came to heal. They never left. The Hillview Wellness Institute offers desperate people a second chance — exclusive treatments, remote luxury, and the promise of transformation. When drought exposes a body preserved in the cracked clay near the property, Detective Maya Thorne discovers that some clients got more transformation than they paid for. The dead woman wasn't the first. The excavation reveals another body beneath her. Both were guests who checked in and never checked out — their disappearances explained away, their families told they'd "moved on." Director Dr Martin Hayes ...

When construction workers uncover preserved human remains at Kingfisher Station—a luxury resort development in rural Australia—Detective Maya Thorne is called back to the hometown she fled as a teenager. The discovery is eerily similar to a case she solved months earlier, but this time it's personal: the development borders her childhood home, which she abandoned. The victim is identified as Elaine Mercer, an environmental consultant who disappeared eight years ago while investigating water rights during the region's worst drought in decades. Maya quickly discovers that Elaine had ...

In the Outback, trust is the most valuable gem of all. As the story opens, US Secret Service Agent Elaine Brogan finds herself reluctantly pulled into the orbit of her nemesis, Giorgio Cattoretti. It starts when a desperate couple, Gareth Martin and Heather Bancroft, show up unannounced at the American Consulate in Marseilles and plead for Elaine's help. They believe that only the notorious Giorgio “The Cat” Cattoretti, who previously owned their diamond-cutting factory, can help them deal with their dishonest Croatian partners. Elaine is skeptical of their claims about a counterfeit ...

The death of Old Joe, a homeless man on Darlinghurst Road, seemed inevitable—until the autopsy revealed it was murder. Darlinghurst Road, once the beating heart of Sydney's red-light district, is where the past lingers in the shadows. However, the city's Eastern Suburbs are not known for bloodshed. When a second victim, an affluent woman from exclusive Point Piper, is found with her throat cut, the divide between Sydney's elite and its outcasts grows more sinister. Detective Gary Haddock has seen it all in Homicide, but even he is baffled by the lack of connection between the murders. ...

What begins as a straightforward homicide quickly evolves into something far more sinister when Detective Maya Thorne discovers evidence of Dr Lawson's medical negligence and drug addiction that led to patients' deaths. As she digs deeper, a complex web of protection and corruption emerges, involving town officials who chose maintaining healthcare over patient safety. When council member James Wilson becomes the prime suspect, Maya uncovers his desperate arrangement with Lawson—protection in exchange for experimental treatment for Wilson's chronically ill wife. With evidence mounting of a...

Friday's Mum, the Nobel Prize winning physicist, has been accused of espionage. The police think she's been selling secrets about the CERN Hadron Super Collider. Friday knows her mother isn't capable of such a thing - this is a woman who can't even operate a dishwasher. She's got to smuggle...

Is Harriet Blue as great a detective as Lindsay Boxer? Harriet Blue, the most single-minded detective since Lindsay Boxer, won't rest until she stops a savage killer targeting female university students. But new clues point to a more chilling predator than she ever could have imagined. BookShots...

Wool is currency. Silence is tradition. And a man lies dead with his own blades in his chest. In a Warragulla shearing shed, a body is found splayed across the board — a wool classer who knew too much about how fleeces get graded and whose pockets they fill. Detective Maya Thorne arrives expecting a rural homicide. What she finds is an industry rotten to the core. Fraudulent classifications. Rigged auctions. Land siphoned from desperate farmers into the hands of two people who've controlled the district's wool trade for decades: Sarah Kingsley, a landowner with a legacy to protect, and ...

Two fearless women--living a century apart--find themselves entangled in the mystery surrounding the biggest scientific controversy of the nineteenth century: the classification of the platypus. 1808 Agnes Banks, NSW Rose Winton wants nothing more than to work with her father, eminent naturalist...

In drought-stricken Warragulla, where parched paddocks and cracked earth mirror the town's hidden fractures, Detective Maya Thorne investigates the poisoning of beloved publican Albert Whitcombe. What begins as an isolated murder quickly reveals deeper currents when Maya discovers Whitcombe planned to publish a memoir exposing the town's darkest secrets. When evidence connects the murder to a fifteen-year-old hit-and-run that killed a teenage boy, Maya must navigate small-town silence and the powerful influence of the Langley family, who've shaped Warragulla's narrative for generations. As ...

Detective Jason Smith is sick and tired of the English weather. It's February in York and the dark, dreary days are getting him down. When his wife, DC Erica Whitton wins a holiday to Australia, Smith is reluctant to go. He has no desire to go back home. Against his better judgement, Smith agrees to show his wife and daughter where he grew up. The perfect holiday soon turns into a nightmare as Smith finds himself in a race against time to save the only people he's ever cared about. Children in Smith's home town are being murdered. There's something rotten there.

DI Mark Williamson and his wife, Christine, move from Sydney to the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia for a quieter lifestyle. Serious crime is low and Mark finds time to join the local Tennis Club, but peace in this idyllic area is shattered when a woman is found murdered in her own home. Can Mark find Faye Abbott’s killer and is her death linked to the murders which occur shortly afterwards at the Tennis Club?

Three dark and daunting mysteries for Police Constable Elizabeth West to solve. Can she do it when she is lumbered with a plodding police investigation. 1: On the floor of an old Mansion there is the body of a young girl killed by a poisoned dart. 2: In a village in the mountains a teacher dies from eating poisonous mushrooms - the original mushroom pie poisoning! 3: In an old mill town a young man, with connections to China Town, is found dead in his flat! 'Great mysteries.' 'Go Elizabeth West.'

Dr. Blair Harbour, once a wealthy, respected pediatric surgeon, is now an ex-con down on her luck. She's determined to keep her nose clean and win back custody of her son. But when her former cellmate begs for help to find her missing daughter, Blair is compelled to put her new-found freedom on the line. Detective Jessica Sanchez has always had a difficult relationship with the LAPD. And her inheritance of a multi-million dollar mansion as a reward for catching a killer has just made her police enemy number one.

In the scorching heat of Alice Springs, where temperatures regularly exceed 40°C, Detective Senior Constable Sarah Reeves is called to investigate when gallery owner Maxwell Reid is found dead among his prized Aboriginal artworks. What begins as an apparent poisoning soon reveals a sophisticated art forgery operation exploiting indigenous artists and their cultural heritage. When evidence points to multiple suspects—from rival gallery owners to exploited Aboriginal artists with legitimate grievances—Sarah must navigate both the brutal summer heat and the closed ranks of a town where ...