Stone town. Margaret Hickey. 2022.

When three teenagers stumble upon a body in dense bushland one rainy Friday night, Detective Sergeant Mark Ariti’s hopes for a quiet posting in his old hometown are shattered. The victim is Aidan Sleeth, a property developer, whose controversial plan to buy up local land means few are surprised he ended up dead.

However, his gruesome murder is overshadowed by a mystery consuming the entire nation: the disappearance of Detective Sergeant Natalie Whitsed.

Natalie had been investigating the celebrity wife of crime boss Tony ‘The Hook’ Scopelliti when she vanished. What did she uncover? Has it cost her her life? And why are the two Homicide detectives, sent from the city to run the Sleeth case, so obsessed with Nathalie’s fate?

Following a late-night call from his former boss, Mark is sure of one thing, he’s now in the middle of a deadly game……