Bondi, 1945 to 1947. Dot Campbell has lost her husband to the war and is slowly finding out who she is without him. What she has is a good eye, a stubborn streak, and an Australian Terrier named Blue who is never wrong about people. Across nine short linked cases — a Saturday-morning swimmer, a hamper heist before Christmas, a day out at the Easter Show — she becomes the person Bondi turns to when something small has gone wrong and nobody official will bother.
These are heartwarming tales, not whodunits: no murders, no menace, just a community putting itself back together after the war. Each is an evening's read, in the warm company of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, and together they tell how the agency came to be, before it ever had a name.
The Books
Book 1
The Saturday Morning Swimmer
Blue's spot on the bed is cold. Three Saturdays running he has slipped out before dawn, and the trail of wet paw prints ends at a faded blue door — and someone the respectable world stopped looking at.
Coming soon
Book 2
The Case Of The Missing Lamingtons
Sixteen dozen lamingtons vanish from a hall full of watchful women, and the whispers settle on proud old Meg O'Malley. Blue's nose says the gossip has it wrong — and what it finds needs mending, not catching.
Coming soon
Book 3
Captains Cache
Everyone agrees a lost parrot is no one's business. But Captain flew casualty lists through artillery fire for the Red Cross, and a veteran who served like that does not simply wander off through an open window.
Coming soon
Book 4
The Tram That Stopped For Tea
Between Bronte and the school, the 12B slows where no timetable says it should — outside a tea shop keeping the kettle hot for people the city stopped seeing. A man with a council notebook is writing it all down.
Coming soon
Book 5
The Ham Radio Chase
The police close the folder on Meg Brennan's stolen Ford with a soft, final sound. So Dot keys a radio, and across Sydney a whole network of amateur operators leans in to listen.
Coming soon
Book 6
Bitter Sweet Thursday
Piano after midnight — the first live music since the war — leads to an empty hall and a woman playing to no one. One warm room and one Thursday night could bring Bondi's widows out from behind their curtains.
Coming soon
Book 7
The Calendar
Dot was never any good at leaving a loose thread alone, and the Guild sale takings are short six pounds and sixty calendars. The trail runs from a bare stall to a frightened boy with ink on his fingers.
Coming soon
Book 8
The Christmas Hamper Heist
Forty Christmas hampers assembled, forty-one delivered. The Guild president wants a culprit before Christmas Day; the missing basket leads instead to a question nobody at the Pavilion wants asked.
Coming soon
Book 9
Blue's Easter Show Adventure
Greta Bauer has not opened her front door in three months. Now she wants to enter her spaniel in the Royal Easter Show, and getting her there means walking a grieving friend past every reason to stay home.
Coming soon
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