Bondi, 1945–1947. The war is over, the telegrams have done their work, and Dot Campbell has been holding her days together one small routine at a time since her husband James went missing in New Guinea. She walks his Australian Terrier, Blue, along the tideline because Blue still expects the morning to happen. And invisible women, it turns out, hear everything.
These are gentle mysteries in the tradition of Jacqueline Winspear: no bodies, no gore, and no drawing-room puzzles. What Dot faces are the quiet civic wrongs of a suburb finding its feet after the war, forged notices, skimmed charities, men with council stamps who count on grieving women looking away. The Bondi Tales are the prequel to the Bondi Community Detective Agency books: this is how Dot began.
The Books
Book 1
The Saturday Morning Swimmer
The chain on the Icebergs gate is new: galvanised steel, a council padlock, and a notice in the flat bureaucratic type that means no argument. Nobody has told the Saturday swimmers why, and Blue will not move from the railing.
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Book 2
The Case of the Missing Lamingtons
Three days before Easter, a tray of lamingtons goes missing from the Guild kitchen. Blue takes the scent along the sand and noses out a small carved token, and a question Bondi would rather not be asked.
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Book 3
Captain’s Cache
On the morning of the Manly paddleboard arrival, Dot sees a wrong thing and the race official smiles it away. By afternoon a Hall Street widow is missing her hairbrush, and a sailor's knot has been left behind.
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Book 4
The Tram That Stopped for Tea
The 12B has paused at a corner that appears on no timetable, long enough for the conductor's cup of tea at Chen's. Then a council notice orders the stop struck from the line, and Mrs Chen will not say why.
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Book 5
The Ham Radio Chase
By morning a neighbour's car is gone from the Parade, and Waverley police manage seventeen minutes and a sympathetic nod. Meg's transceiver reaches further: veterans on the amateur bands, in every suburb, listening.
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Book 6
Bitter Sweet Thursday
A brooch is gone from Mrs Chen's parlour, the last of a son who died in '42, and she would rather not trouble the police. On the tram next morning, two Guild women talk with their heads too close together.
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Book 7
The Calendar
Twelve war widows photographed as themselves, three hundred calendars, a shilling a copy for the families behind the names. Then a printer's cart begins calling at an hour that appears in none of the Guild's records.
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Book 8
The Christmas Hamper Heist
Forty red hampers along the hall wall, forty names in the eligibility ledger, and the Mayor's car due at half past ten. The delivery log says forty-one. Dot has six minutes.
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Book 9
Blue’s Easter Show Adventure
Pat enters Blue in the Royal Easter Show without asking, which is how Dot comes to be standing in the grooming tent a week before the show, watching two plainclothes detectives watch a steward's door and not one single dog.
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