A small mining town. A brutal double murder. A killer among them.
DS Lucas Walker is out bush with his little sister Grace from Boston. They're fetching his cousin Blair, who's been mining boulder opal in Kanpara. The town is tense with rumours of a big opal find, and Blair wants out.
But Kanpara is in Channel Country, and when the three try to leave the next day, they find themselves completely cut off. A deluge far north has flooded the rivers overnight, making the roads impassable. Then Blair receives a shocking phone call.
Two bodies have been found, brutally murdered.
Trapped, with a killer in their midst, Walker is in a race to uncover the murderer before the water recedes. And when Blair is arrested by local police, the stakes couldn't be higher. With all his focus on clearing his cousin's name, will Walker see how much danger his sister is in before it's too late? Patricia Wolf has been a journalist for more than 15 years, a regular contributor to titles including The Guardian, the Financial Times, The Independent and The Telegraph, among others. She grew up in outback Australia, in a mining town called Mount Isa in far north-west Queensland - eagle eyed readers will have spotted a small reference to it in her first book, OUTBACK. Patricia loves the rugged beauty, indigo sky and wide horizons of the outback, but left Australia after university to travel the world and became a journalist. She lives in Berlin, Germany, but the outback always calls her home. In 2019, just before the covid pandemic locked us all in, Patricia spent two months in northwest Queensland, taking a four-week road trip. As she drove and spent nights and days surrounded by the beauty and rugged harshness of the outback, DI Lucas Walker and his stories came to be. The third thrilling instalment in the bestselling DS Lucas Walker series Author is based in Berlin, Germany but is Australian. Outback, the first in the series was shortlisted for the CWA New Blood Dagger Award 2023. Perfect for fans of Jane Harper, Cara Hunter and Chris Whitaker.
