Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By Lee Christine, Allen & Unwin, $29.99.
As a debut into rural suspense Charlotte Pass is a winner!
Christine creates a finely etched storyline filled with suspense and mystery as she carefully establishes that the past does not always remain in the past. What’s more, murder will often be committed twice to cover long-buried tracks.
A shocking discovery is made deep in the Snowy Mountains. There’s a killer who will do anything to keep secrets buried.
In the remote ski village of Charlottes Pass, high in the Kosciuszko National Park, it’s the beginning of Winterfest. The annual event is shaping to be promising as the village is snowed in. Conditions are just perfect.
Aiden Smythe, a famous local, is returning to launch the festival. All is on target for a hugely successful event until ski instructor Vanessa Bell makes the gruesome discovery of human bones buried in a snow drift.
Detective Sergeant Pierce Ryder of the Sydney Homicide Squad is called in to lead the investigative team. He arrives with his new young partner Detective Constable Mitchell Flowers, a millennial whose main ambition is to become a police prosecutor.
He soon determines that the bones are those of Celia Delaney, a young woman who disappeared from the ski resort in 1964 during the biggest winter storm in Australian alpine history.
When a second murder takes place, Ryder suspects that the deaths are related, and that the person responsible is still in the village. Amid the escalating tension, Ryder is desperate to make an arrest before the stakes rise even higher.
Set within the stunning Snowy Mountains, this intriguing mystery uncovers deadly, mysterious secrets in the valleys and mountains of this iconic area.
