This is Australian murder mystery at its best, a slow burn revisit of a cold case, set in a sleepy outback town.

Detective Sergeant Mark Ariti is on long service leave and a bit lost, struggling with his relationship and career. He leaps at the opportunity to work on a recently reopened cold case, one in which he has a distant personal connection.

Thirty years ago, a burnt body was discovered in scrub off the Stuart Highway, south of Cutters End, and it was ruled that the man had been working on his problematic car when his engine exploded, killing him. The dead man, Denby, was remembered as a nice bloke, a hero in fact, who had saved a woman and her daughter from flood waters. It is this young girl, now a television personality, who lobbied for his case to be reopened. Ariti travels to Cutters End, where he begins unravelling the decades old case with the help of local Senior Constable Jagdeep Kaur, and he soon learns that this death isn’t the only unsolved case that seems to be haunting the area.

This is a very clever and atmospheric unravelling of all that seems normal about a town, where things are not what they seem. The details of the police procedural work are well done, and the characters well developed, as is the heat and isolation of the communities along the endless Stuart Highway.

Hickey does a marvellous job of teasing out the venomous secrets that have become so corrosive over time. The reader unravels the mystery as it is intended, and the ending is terrifically satisfying. This is a debut novel and I look forward to more from the author.

Reviewed by Lesley West