'Mark Wyles fell hard as a policeman, demoted, and sent to the isolated Hawker Station on the fringe of South Australia’s Flinders Ranges. However, a missing person creates a surprising opportunity to regain detective status when he and rookie policewoman Katherine Cooper follow a trail of disappearances from outback Hawker to Adelaide. The unlikely pair make a formidable team and unearth a plot involving a network of Communist sympathisers seeking intelligence about British missile tests at Woomera. However, to prevent the intelligence from escaping to the USSR, they must stop a ruthless killer.' (Publication summary)