Cirrus@Austlit

''He didn’t have to be normal, the boy realised. He just had to pretend.’

'It’s winter in Melbourne and Detective Emmett Corban is starting to regret his promotion to head of the Missing Persons Unit, as the routine reports pile up on his desk.

'So when Natale Gibson goes missing, he’s convinced this is the big case he’s been waiting for – the woman’s husband and parents insist the devoted mother would never abandon her children, and her personal accounts remain untouched.

'But things aren’t all they seem. The close-knit Italian family is keeping secrets - none bigger than the one Natale has been hiding.

'Just as the net seems to be tightening, the investigation is turned on its head. The body of a woman is found . . . then another.

'What had seemed like a standard missing person's case has turned into a frightening hunt for a serial killer, and time is running out.

'But to really understand these shocking crimes, Emmett and his team will need to delve back through decades of neglect – back to a squalid inner-city flat, where a young boy is left huddling over his mother’s body . . .'

Source: publisher's blurb

'A chilling police thriller set in a small coastal town on the Mornington Peninsula, where the discovery of human bones on an isolated beach has reawakened a twenty-year-old cold case…

'On the evening of September 22, 1998, three teenage girls venture out for a night of mischief in the coastal town of Blairgowrie. But only two return . . .

'For over twenty years the disappearance of fifteen-year-old Cecilia May remains a baffling cold case - until human bones are discovered on an isolated beach.

'Now it’s up to Detective Emmett Corban and his team to dig up decades of trauma, and find the missing piece of an investigation that’s as complex as it is tragic.

'Does the answer lie with the only suspect, a registered sex offender who confessed, then immediately provided a rock-solid alibi? Or with the two teen survivors – neither of whom can keep their story straight?

'But the police aren’t the only ones hunting for the truth: someone else has arrived in the seaside town. And she’s prepared to do whatever it takes to find her own version of justice…' (Publication summary)