A Top Ten bestselling debut, WAKE is a searing debut crime novel where the grief and guilt surrounding an unsolved disappearance still haunt a small farming community . . . and will ultimately lead to a reckoning Evelyn simply vanished.

The small town of Nannine lies in the harsh red interior of New South Wales. Once a thriving outback centre, years of punishing drought have whittled it down to no more than a couple of pubs and a police station. And its one sinister claim to fame: the still-unsolved disappearance of Evelyn McCreery nineteen years ago from the bedroom she shared with her twin sister. Mina McCreery’s life has been defined by the intense and ongoing public interest in her sister’s case.

Now an anxious and reclusive adult, Mina lives alone on her family’s sunbaked destocked sheep farm. The million-dollar reward her mother established to solve the disappearance has never been paid out. Enter Lane Holland, a private investigator who dropped out of the police academy to earn a living cracking cold cases. Lane has his eye on the unclaimed money, but he also has darker motivations for wanting to solve the case.

Compulsively readable, with an unforgettable setting and cast of characters, WAKE is a powerful, unsparing story of how trauma ripples outward when people’s private tragedies become public property, and how it’s never too late for the truth to set things right. ‘It is hard to believe WAKE is a first novel.

Plot, pacing and characterisation are so finely judged that it feels more like the work of a past master. The tension builds, and the revelations keep coming, right until the final page where a thrilling climax combines horror, relief and hope. If I wore an Akubra I’d doff it.