Krimi og spænding

Mother Paul, June Wright¿s beloved nun-detective, returns to her sleuthing ways after she takes up a new position as warden of a student hall of residence at the University of Melbourne.No sooner has Judith Mornane arrived on campus than she startles her fellow residents by announcing her intention to discover the murderer of her sister, who disappeared from the same dorm a year earlier. The ever-curious Mother Paul is drawn to investigate what happened to Judith¿s sister¿did she simply run off for reasons best known to herself, as the police concluded, or could it be she really was murdered? Was her disappearance perhaps linked to a tragedy that happened at around the same time¿the accidental drowning (in her bathtub) of the wife of one of the college¿s professors? Was that drowning in fact as accidental as the official investigation suggested?Mother Paul believes the two events are connected somehow, and a further tragedy, the faked-suicide death of one of her student charges, convinces her that a particularly cruel and clever murderer is still at work within the college. She is not above a little subterfuge in the interest of discovering the truth and moves her colleagues, the students, and even the police around like so many figures on a chessboard until finally, amid high drama, the murderer is revealed.

June Wright''s most memorable detective, Mother Paul, might seem a bit otherworldly, but little escapes the kindly nun - she has a shrewd grasp of all that goes on in the hostel for young women she runs in 1950s Melbourne. The atmosphere is already strained by a spate of anonymous letters, when Mary Allen finds a stranger stabbed to death in the garden. Then one of the girls drowns, an apparent suicide, and the tension reaches fever pitch. Is there a connection between the two deaths and the letters? The police investigate, but Mother Paul pursues her own enquiries.

Sydney, 1959. Billy Glasheen is flogging mail order schemes from a back room in Chinatown. Hey, it''s a living. But unsettled accounts in his past are coming due. An ultimatum is delivered: come up with a small fortune in hush money, or cop a bullet and a shallow grave. Time to call in all debts and favours, but just when he needs them most, Bill''s old gang of beatniks and bandits have made themselves strangely scarce. Amaze Your Friends is a dark, wild ride through a city of easy money and sudden falls, high times and hangovers, jukebox rock''n''roll and the lowdown flophouse blues.