Author(s): Kate Hamilton

Crime Fiction

Nobody wants a call from the boss who fired you unless of course, he was one of the longest-serving Labor Prime Ministers in Australia. The ex-PM summons Frank Phelan. He is a rumpled thirty-nine-year-old and former Deputy Chief of Staff to the Hon. William (Bill) Moriarty Falco AO. That was before the leak. Frank leaves Canberra and heads for Sydney to visit Bill in the hospital where he is having cancer treatment. Bill asks him to go to Nimbin and find his daughter Stella who disappeared in 1984 with her boyfriend. As Frank leaves the hospital, he meets April Moreland, a journalist who recognises him from the leak coverage. Once Frank gets to Nimbin, he runs into April again and decides to work together with her. They are kidnapped by the biker gang called The Hippos and taken to the forest, tied up and left there. Frank slips down a crevasse, breaks his arm and lands on a skeleton. They escape, only to nearly drown in a flooded creek. Once rescued, they report the skeleton they found and question a witness who leads them to Smiley O'Tool. Frank extracts a confession about Stella's death and burial place from Smiley who is arrested and charged with murder. He later dies in prison. The skeleton turns out to belong to Stella's boyfriend, Jesse Mendoza who is wanted by the FBI. April wins a Walkley Award and goes to Iraq as a war correspondent. There is a private ceremony for Stella and later, a state funeral for Bill Falco. Frank has lost a good friend. Frank gets a job at Legal Aid in Sydney and meets Diana Gianiovellis, who works there too. They go to lunch at a nearby café not noticing that a man across the street is watching them behind dark glasses.