Slaughter Park is the final book in the ‘Belltree’ trilogy. Harry Belltree, former homicide detective with the New South Wales police force, is urgently called back to Sydney from North Queensland. His wife is wanted for murder and is on the run.

Then body parts from more than one dismembered corpse are found suspended from tree branches in Slater Park, an area of inner Sydney. A local newspaper refers to it as Slaughter Park.

Elsewhere in the state capital, Kelly Pool, investigative reporter and a friend of Harry, is following up the killing of Terry Palfreyman. His body has been found in the Blue Mountains, a two-hour drive from Sydney. Terry is a well-known interjector at company annual general meetings, asking questions about executive salaries and unethical work practices.

Readers of the second book in the trilogy, Ash Island, will recognise the name of Amber Nordlund, a single mother with physical and psychological problems. She’s being closely watched by her brutish cousins, Ryan and Hayden, at the behest of ruthless Uncle Konrad. Konrad has all the charm of a chamber pot. These seemingly separate stories interweave as Harry continues to investigate the death of his parents in a car crash. The coroner at the time found the cause of the crash was driver error. Harry knows they were murdered. He wants to know why.

Surprises in Slaughter Park come thick and fast as Harry, not only a former detective but also an experienced veteran of the wars in Afghanistan, remorselessly breaks the rules as he battles a sadistic, evil opposition.

Outstanding questions are deftly resolved in this well-written, exciting final episode to an imaginative trilogy.

Reviewed by Clive Hodges