Cirrus@Austlit

'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)