Philip Trudeau has fallen a long, long way from grace. An alcoholic ex-con, he was once the crack investigative journalist for a major financial newspaper-until he got too close to uncovering the truth about one of Melbourne’s most powerful men and his shady business dealings. Trudeau now writes for a local rag in the western suburbs, trying to get his life back on track. When sent to cover the tragic death of a boy killed at a railway crossing, he soon discovers that the boy’s death is not as accidental as it first seems. Slowly Trudeau is drawn into a world involving a long-dead Australian painter, art theft, corruption and intrigue. Trudeau is a marvellously flawed hero, driven by the ghosts of this past and mired in a world where everything is falling apart around him. While some of the plotting is coincidental in the extreme, the characters are well drawn, as is the Melbourne setting. Crime fans will enjoy the compelling narrative, the succinct writing and the pleasing lack of blood, gore and psychopathic behaviour that mars most contemporary crime stories. I suspect and hope that this isn’t the last we see of Trudeau and I’d be glad to see him grow and develop in future books.

Shane Strange is a bookseller at Paperchain Books in Canberra

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker

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