The sixth Peninsula Murder Mystery. Hal Challis is in trouble at home and abroad: carpeted by the boss for speaking out about police budget cuts; missing his lover, Ellen Destry, who is overseas on a study tour. But there's plenty to keep his mind off his problems. A rapist in a police uniform stalks Challis's Peninsula beat, there is a serial armed robber headed in his direction and a home invasion that's a little too close to home. Not to mention a very clever, very mysterious female cat burglar who may or may not be planning something on Challis's patch. Meanwhile, at the Waterloo Police Station, Challis finds his offsiders have their own issues. Scobie Sutton, still struggling with his wife's depression, seems to be headed for a career crisis; and something very interesting is going on between Constable Pam Murphy and Jeanne Schiff, the feisty young sergeant on secondment from the Sex Crimes Unit. Garry Disher keeps the tension and intrigue ramped up exquisitely on multiple fronts, while he takes his regular characters in compelling new directions. Disher is a grand master of the police procedural, operating at the peak of his craft. Garry Disher is the author of more than forty titles: fiction, children's books, anthologies, textbooks and the Wyatt thrillers. Disher has won numerous awards, including the German Crime Prize (twice) and the Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Fiction in 2007 and 2010. 'With so many exhibitionist forensic experts showing off their extraordinary skills, it's a rare pleasure to sit down to a traditional detective story in which solid police work solves a crime. Inspector Hal Challis is very much in charge of the operations in an excellent Australian series written by Garry Disher...There are no shootouts here. Just the drama of people from very different social classes locked in battle over the schools, the services, the beaches, the views - and a way of life that has already gone behind a cloud.' New York Times 'DI Challis and his sergeant Ellen Destry...are both deftly, yet complexly drawn characters: two of the best in the genre and Disher easily one of the best writers.' Weekend Herald 'Disher is a fine writer about place and also people. Challis, in all his testiness and kindness, is a carefully crafted senior policeman...As in all the best police series, there's continuity and change...Go Garry, Go!' Sue Turnbull, Age/Sydney Morning Herald 'In all, this is a world-class police novel and Disher continues to be one of our best and most consistent crime novelists. Highly Recommended.' Canberra Times 'This is classic Disher, the taut writing bringing a complex plot into as sharp relief as the vivid settings and dread-laden atmosphere do the fully rounded characters.' West Australian 'Disher works like a biographer, calmly attempting to assemble order in his characters' chaotic lives. Disher cares about their interlinked worlds as much as he does about labyrinth plots, fetishised violence and the showy brainwork of his coppers. As always this grand master propels us methodically yet elegiacally. But he doesn't just provide classy entertainment. His fiction is a kind of social barometer of prevailing tensions in the community, especially in the outlying badlands of Australia's provincial coastal towns.' Weekend Australian 'The sixth in the Challis and Destry series is unmissable. If you haven't heard of them, reading this will have you backtracking.' Sunday Examiner