Bondi Beach, 1947. The telegram from New Guinea made Dot Campbell a widow; her late husband's Australian Terrier, Blue, made her a detective. When someone starts quietly taking the beloved Bondi Pavilion apart, the police offer a file and a shrug, and Dot discovers she cannot walk past the one detail that does not fit. Soon there is a small agency above the shops, a thickening notebook, and a suburb that has learned who to bring its trouble to.
These are mysteries of menace and deduction rather than murder: patient campaigns against a community, worked out over cups of tea by neighbours who notice everything, until the threat turns personal. Atmospheric postwar mysteries for readers of Jacqueline Winspear and Kerry Greenwood.
The Books
Book 1
The Bondi Pavilion Mystery
The penny fortune machine in the Pavilion arcade has jammed for the third time, and the brass pin inside is filed rough where no honest wear could reach. Nobody official is calling it anything but neglect.
Not yet on sale
Book 2
The Campbell Parade Conundrum
Seven shuttered windows on Campbell Parade in a single winter, and a father at the school gates asking why his boy now leaves by the route of minimum observation. Neither trouble should belong to the other.
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Book 3
The Easter Show Enigma
Somebody gouged Greta's prize pumpkins the week before judging, and the woman who runs the district exhibit has not arrived: no list, no schedule, volunteers waiting. By the doorway a man watches, and does not stop.
Not yet on sale
Book 4
The Central Station Caper
A closed case: the brooch was in the guttering, and the culprit was a magpie. Then Antonio comes up the Pavilion stairs still in his apron, his stand in the Central Station arcade broken open.
Not yet on sale
Book 5
The Tram Troubles
Red ink in the ledger, and the day's work is a missing cat. Then three depot men on the 12B talk like men who no longer expect to be heard, and the line fails in ways that are not accidents.
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Book 6
The Hydro Majestic Hotel Mystery
Hand-delivered, no stamp: a diamond necklace gone from a locked room at a mountain hotel, and a guest who cannot go to the police because then her husband would have to be told. Blue stays home.
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Book 7
The Chinatown Chicanery
Four burglaries in six weeks, all of them Chinese businesses off Dixon Street, each thief taking one chosen thing and leaving the rest. The police call the case pending. On Dixon Street, faces turn a fraction early.
Not yet on sale
Book 8
The Five Beaches Caper
December brings a missing cat and a disputed fence. Then a council van sits idling an hour by the tram stop, a heavy brass padlock appears on a Pavilion shed, and the survey men change into plain clothes.
Not yet on sale
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