Hot Ground

By Lisa Ellery

For crime fiction fans of Dervla McTiernan and Jane Harper comes an outback police procedural where gold fever takes a deadly turn.

In the middle of the night in a remote part of Western Australia’s goldfields, the thud of a mallet on a marker peg sets off a chain reaction that unearths secrets long buried.

Detective Jessy Parkin – sent to policing purgatory in the aftermath of a tainted investigation – is tasked with finding Max Cochrane, a veteran prospector who has vanished into thin air.

What begins with a concerned daughter’s plea for help soon burgeons into a mystery as shapeshifting as a desert mirage. Fortunes are being built on the back of Kalgoorlie’s coveted gold, but the truth might be the rarest find of all.

Read Serena Kirby’s review on Australian Rural & Regional News:

“Not only does the author live in the gold mining city of Kalgoorlie-Boulder, where the book is set, but she also has a professional background in commercial and mining law. These facts add both a level of authenticity and depth to the storyline which I feel enhances the credibility of the book’s setting and plot.”