Cirrus@Austlit

''You're a politician, a public figure. What on earth were you thinking?'

'Up-and-coming junior minister Gregory Buchanan has had a portrait painted of himself by the acclaimed artist Sophie White - a painting she intends to enter in this year's Archibald Prize. Until then, Gregory has hung it in pride of place on his dining-room wall. It's a life-sized standing portrait, practically photographic in nature. And it's a nude.

'His wife will be home soon and he thinks the painting will be a pleasant surprise. Even more surprising will be an unexpected accumulation of guests- his sardonic mother, his fundamentalist mother-in-law, his lycra-clad cycling-enthusiast sister, and the state premier, Louisa Wetherly - a senior minister has just resigned in scandalous circumstances, and she needs Gregory to step into the spotlight ahead of the coming election.

'It's going to be a wild afternoon, and an even wilder campaign - to do something about Gregory's naked ambition.' (Publication summary)

'A novel about revenge, obsession, and the dangerous gullibility of religious fanatics.

'In 1944, in the outer-Melbourne suburb of Nunawading, a brutal triple murder heralds the return of a long-forgotten cult. A man named Anthony Prescott has declared himself the Messiah and has promised his followers immortality. There are those who believe him and who are ready to kill in his name. Inspector Titus Lambert of the Melbourne Homicide unit, whose detectives are over-stretched, requests the discreet assistance of Helen Lord and Joe Sable, once members of his unit, now private inquiry agents. The investigation is more perilous than any of them realise, and will have tragic consequences.

'The Orchard Murders is the fourth novel in Robert Gott’s acclaimed series, set in Melbourne during the dark days of the Second World War.' (Publication summary)

'In the autumn of 1944, George Starling prepares to exact revenge on the person he hates most in the world (and Starling has a long list of people he hates), Detective Joe Sable of the Melbourne Homicide division. Driven by his dark passion for Nazism, Starling is going to make sure that nothing and no one will stand in his way and survive.

'Homicide is in turmoil. Riven by internal divisions and disrupted by the war, it has become a dangerous place for Joe to work. Constable Helen Lord, suspended from her position in Homicide, and battling grief, is also in Starling’s sights. Knowing that Inspector Titus Lambert can’t protect them from Starling’s ruthless aim, Helen and Joe decide to set their own trap. But when the trap is sprung, who will be caught in it?

'The Autumn Murders is a stylish, historical whodunit, written with wit and insight into the dark corners where the worst of us hides.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

William Power, actor and sometime private inquiry agent, has returned from the Northern Territory, shaken, stirred, and generally discombobulated. 'I survived the tropics with my life and my looks intact, despite the best efforts of the flora, fauna, and Military Intelligence to steal both from me.' It is late 1942, and in what he believes is a demeaning sideshow to the war, he finds himself playing a pantomime dame. If only this was his only worry, but, as his great hero, Shakespeare, noted, 'When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.' Can Will finally overcome his tendency to be the living embodiment of Murphy's Law?

Source: Publisher's Blurb

'The Port Fairy Murders is the sequel to The Holiday Murders, an historical crime novel set in 1943 in the newly formed homicide department of Victoria Police, which explored little-known fascist groups, particularly an organisation called Australia First, that festered in Australia both before and during the war.The Port Fairy Murders continues with this exploration but looks, as well, at the bitter divide between Catholics and Protestants. This divide was especially raw in small rural communities. The homicide team, which includes Detective Joe Sable and Constable Helen Lord, is now trying to track down a dangerous man named George Starling. At the same time, they are called to investigate a double murder in Port Fairy. It seems straightforward — they have a signed confession — but it soon becomes apparent that nothing is straightforward about the incident.

'The novel examines the tensions that simmer in a small town. Written with great verve and insight, The Port Fairy Murders is a superb psychological study, as well as a riveting historical who-dunnit.' (Publication summary)

'On Christmas Eve, 1943, the newly formed but undermanned Homicide division of the Melbourne police force is called to investigate the vicious double murder of a father and son. When Military Intelligence becomes involved, Homicide's Inspector Titus Lambert must unravel the personal from the political.

'If only the killings had stopped at two. The police are desperate to come to grips with an extraordinary and disquieting upsurge of violence. For Constable Helen Lord, it is an opportunity to make her mark in a male-dominated world where she is patronised as a novelty. For Detective Joe Sable, the investigation forces a reassessment of his indifference to his Jewish heritage. Racing against the clock, the police uncover simmering tensions among secretive local Nazi sympathisers as a psychopathic fascist usurper makes his move.

'The Holiday Murders explores a little-known and sometimes violent corner of Australian history, and finds oddly modern echoes in its paranoia, xenophobia, and ugly fervour.' (Publisher's blurb)

'The fatally over-confident hero of Good Murder returns to pit his meagre detective skills against Army Intelligence, belligerent in-laws, a town full of GIs, and a creepy conspiracy to bring on an Australian sectarian nightmare.

'Failed Shakespearean actor and would-be private detective William Power returns to Melbourne in disgrace after a disastrous brush with theatre and murder in Maryborough. Bloodied, broken, but somehow unbowed, he arrives in a town struggling under war rationing and full of cocky American soldiers, and lands squarely in the bosom of his childhood home in Carlton – a home now dominated by his sister-in-law, the odious Darlene. But even Will's contempt is tempered when, in the early hours of the morning, Darlene is kidnapped, and Will finds his mother's kitchen splattered with blood and scattered with broken crockery.' (Publication summary)

'It's 1942, and war is raging in Europe and in the Pacific. The Japanese army is on Australia's doorstep, and the small coastal Queensland town of Maryborough is on full war footing. What they are not prepared for is the arrival in the town of a troupe of incompetent actors whose unjustifiably self-confident leader, William Power, is determined to bring his daring production of Titus Andronicus to the barbarians of rural Australia. Unfortunately for the Power Players, the only gift William Power has is a capacity for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. When a young woman goes missing and is found floating dead in the town's water supply, Power becomes the prime suspect in her murder. With every misplaced step he takes, he becomes more and more embroiled in a series of crimes which baffle the police and horrify the locals. Having no confidence in the constabulary, Power decides that his only option is to solve the crimes himself. His acting skills are not good; his detection skills are worse. As he stumbles towards a solution and as his injuries mount up, he never wavers in his belief that he alone can bring the killer to justice. But, with every day that passes, he tightens the noose around his own neck until, on the night of a violent storm, everything changes. And not for the better.' (Publication summary)