AUTHOR DISCUSSION ABOUT NOVEL:

Robert Gott has delivered another masterful crime novel steeped in Australia’s past.

It’s Christmas 1943 and the authorities in Melbourne are dealing with the difficulties of a workforce greatly depleted by the number of men serving in the war. That lack of manpower, however, does not affect the seriousness with which Inspector Titus Lambert regards every case that crosses his desk, and none more so than the violent, awful killing of a young man and his father. There’s been a clumsy and half-hearted attempt to set the scene as a murder-suicide perpetrated by the remorseful father, but it takes no time whatsoever for the experienced Lambert to see through that, and for his young offsider, Detective Joe Sable, to grasp the significance of the involvement of Military Intelligence.

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.