This is the third novel by Hickey featuring Police Detective Mark Ariti (the first being Cutters End), though it can be read as a stand-alone, and a ripper it is too.

When cave diver Mya Rennick descends into an unexplored and newly found sink hole on a farm on the limestone coast of South Australia, she feels nothing but exhilaration. She has no inkling it will be her last dive, though clearly that is always a risk, and when other divers go to retrieve her body, reliving the trauma of another such recovery of young locals many years ago, they are astounded to find another, much older corpse. And so, the reader is taken on a journey of two local families who are both lifelong friends and rivals, one family prospering and one never quite doing well, while mourning tragedies decades old. Mark finds himself stranded in town when his car is damaged, and his natural police instincts kick in as he considers what looks like a terrible, if unexplainable, accident. However, when another murder happens, and the circumstances surrounding the first body in the cave simply fail to add up, it seems that something very wrong is going on in Broken Bay.

Broken Bay is a very clever police procedural, but it is also a psychological thriller. Everyone is potentially a suspect and the claustrophobia and paranoia of the caves, which mirrors that of life in a small regional town, is tangible. Each of the characters is cleverly drawn and sympathetic, and the geology of the sink holes and the caverns that lie beneath them, along with the psychology of the thrill seekers who explore them, is cleverly investigated and explained. It is a fabulous addition to the wealth of Bush Noir novels available, and I recommend it highly.

Reviewed by Lesley West

About the author