By Pip Fioretti
‘Isn’t it your job to stop people being murdered?’
1911, on a winter’s night in arid New South Wales wool country, mounted trooper Augustus Hawkins discovers the bodies of three young people. They are scions of the richest family in the district, savagely murdered on a road that Hawkins should have been patrolling, had he not been busy bedding the local schoolteacher.
Detectives arrive from Sydney and the disgraced Hawkins, a traumatised veteran of the Boer War, comes under fierce scrutiny. With his honour and sanity at stake, he becomes hell-bent on finding the murderer. But as ever darker secrets are revealed about the people he thinks of as friends, Hawkins is forced to confront an uncomfortable question: who is paying the price for the new nation’s prosperity?
Read Aedeen Cremin’s review for ARR.News and her author interview with Pip Fioretti:
This is a cracker of a book … From the very first page we are plunged into the mind of the main character [who] discovers and must investigate the murder of three young people. Who did it is fairly clear, but the reason why is not obvious—and indeed is almost unimaginable.
About the author:
Pip Fioretti lives in Sydney, and enjoys hiking, books, friends and family. Bone Lands is her first crime novel.
