Sydney, 1946. The war is over, the trams run full from first light to last, and the depots are quietly chalking down how many women they still need. Tess Treloar, twenty, a wartime conductress on the Bondi line, is framed off the trams ahead of the retrenchment. Once she has proved the paper wrong, a newspaper ad brings her a shoebox of letters from people with wrongs nobody official will touch.
These are mysteries solved without a body: forged complaints, skimmed wages, a widow's pension filed away on purpose. Tess reads waybills, rent books and rosters the way other detectives read a crime scene. Warm, fair-play, and firmly on the side of the letter-writers — for readers of Alexander McCall Smith, Jacqueline Winspear and Rhys Bowen.
The Books
Book 1
The Crooked Waybill
Three hundred and twenty conductresses left, chalked on the depot board. Then Tess's own name goes up beside it in ink: a damage report for a brake handle she never touched, and no way on earth to answer it.
Not yet on sale
Book 2
The Gift Gone Sour
Something is wrong on the laundry floor, and Carmela would rather go hungry than name it: less on her plate each week, her rent short, and a place she means to keep because it came to her as a favour.
Not yet on sale
Book 3
The Landlord Who Wasn’t
Notices to quit go up along Campbell Parade, citing renovations nobody asked for, and every tenant blames a landlord not one of them has ever laid eyes on. Tess copies a neighbour's rent book under her own.
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Book 4
The Beach Gear Affair
Coupon towels, rubber floats, sandcastle tins: the Scarba children's beach kit goes missing an item at a time. The replacements are signed for and locked away, and are gone within nine days.
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Book 5
The Widow in the Drawer
Every counter gives Nola Lambourne the same kind sentence: nothing under that name. Pension, deferred pay, insurance, a war service home — four claims on one family, all stalled the same polite way.
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Book 6
The Missing Fiancé
Jim Meadows stepped off the troopship fourteen months ago and never walked the last mile home. Tess works back along the line, one wharf clerk at a time, to learn why a good man stopped three streets short.
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Book 7
The Man Her Son Sent
Two years ago a man began calling on a near-blind widow whose son never came home. He mends her guttering, stakes her geraniums, and will not take a penny. The street has decided what he is. Tess hasn't.
Not yet on sale
Book 8
The Last Run
Tess has three months' notice in her pocket when June Ottley, twenty years a conductress, is pulled off her run and charged with theft from the depot stores. A hearing Thursday week, and nobody will show her the figures.
Not yet on sale
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