When the pilot of a light aircraft reports an abandoned vehicle in the desert country north of the Plenty Highway on Tarlton Downs Station, bush policeman Senior Constable Rick Frazier is sent from Harts Range to investigate. His regular assistant is away on tribal business, so he calls at Bonya Community to recruit Jack Cadney - a bush mechanic with previous experience as a Police Aide.
Cadney can hardly believe it. Why would anyone abandon a perfectly good tray back 4x4 Nissan Patrol in the middle of nowhere? ...And where is the driver?
Cadney's father Twofoot Jack has more pressing worries. Some strangers came by - prospecting, they said. On learning they'd been into the north Simpson Desert looking for a special ceremonial site he is angry and concerned, though mainly for reasons of his own. - Yet how could they have done so? ...when not a whitefella alive is supposed to know the place even exists.
Old time miner and prospector Les McCullock may be long dead and buried, but Cadney and Frazier soon find themselves entangled in the legacy of his secretive dealings - plus the more recent activities of others.
This is no TV CSI murder at some million dollar mansion, with cool-as bikini clad witnesses being interviewed poolside. This is Central Australia. THIS IS THE BUSH.
Get a taste of the red sand and spinifex country as you head into the desert with Cadney and Frazier. Then puzzle turns to mystery and mystery to murder as secrets old and new start piling up. And when the wily old Twofoot stirs the stew-pot with a few secrets of his own, his son Jack Cadney finds himself in a difficult situation with little room to move and very few options...
This was a really good book. I enjoyed the mystery, but the best was how accurate and true to life the setting, language and culture was. Expressions such as "finish-up", "same-same" and "full drunk", "little-bit thataway" are everyday, heard all around the Territory.
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