Cirrus@Austlit

'It seems a perfect beach in tropical north Queensland, yet a sign marks the site where fifteen Aboriginal people were massacred more than a century before. Then on a sunny morning in 2002 the body of a young Aboriginal woman washes up on the sand. Accident … or murder?

'Close by lives Cairns forensic pathologist Leah Rookwood, on the island handed down through four generations of Rookwoods. As Leah’s colleague Detective Leslie Fernando investigates the modern- day death, Leah discovers some dubious history in her own family. Are the distant events and the current tragedy linked?'

Source : publisher's blurb

'Set in Queensland, this debut crime novel Double Madness by Caroline de Costa, takes us into a sordid underbelly of psycho-sexual depravity.

'As local residents and authorities in Far North Queensland assess the damage in the aftermath of Cyclone Yasi, a woman's body is found in bizarre circumstances deep in the rainforest.

'Cass Diamond of Cairns CIB is on the team investigating the murder of fashionista Odile Janvier and it's not long before she uncovers a disturbing connection between the victim and the local medical profession.' (Publication summary)

'Weaving together a story of race, ethnicity, environmental politics and intrigue, Caroline de Costa sets her heroine in the lush rainforest, the sparkling seas and the solitary inland country of North Queensland that she knows so well. The story twists and turns, leaving the reader guessing, then guessing again…'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'A young Asian woman lies in a pool of blood in a Cairns motel. Transferred to hospital, she dies before she can tell her story. Detective Cass Diamond and her team are soon on the case.

'The third Cass Diamond mystery explores sex trafficking and abortion, teenage emotions and adult mischief, in a story as densely branched as the rainforest itself. Caroline de Costa holds her readers captive until the very last word.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'A woman lies dead after tumbling down the stairs of a Cairns townhouse. Did she fall or was she pushed? A young man is stabbed to death in a fight in his brother’s kitchen. The remains of a baby are unearthed from behind an abandoned house. It’s all in a day’s work for Detective Cass Diamond. And what seem at first separate incidents may have a thread linking them. As Cass and her team, now including Detective Jo Murphy from the Cairns Drug Squad, delve into the background of the cases, they find unexpected threats, some of which lurk deep in the tropical rainforest surrounding the town, and some that take human form.' (Publication summary)