Garry Disher

Constable Paul Hirschhausen is a whistle-blower. Formerly a promising metropolitan detective, he's been exiled to a one-cop station in South Australia's wheatbelt. So, when he heads up Bitter Wash Road to investigate gunfire and finds himself cut off without backup, there are two possibilities. Either he's found the fugitive killers thought to be in the area, or his 'backup' is about to put a bullet in him. Then when the next call-out takes him to the body of a sixteen-year-old girl, it's clear that whether or not Hirsch finds her killer, his past may well catch up with him. The first book in the Constable Hirsch Mysteries.

Constable Paul Hirschhausen runs a one-cop station in the dry farming country south of the Flinders Ranges. He's still new in town but his community work - welfare checks and a light touch - is starting to pay off. Now Christmas is here and, apart from a grass fire, two boys stealing a vehicle, and Brenda Flann entering the front bar of the pub without exiting her car, Hirsch's life has been peaceful. Until he's called to an incident on Kitchener Street, a strange and vicious attack that sickens the community. And when the Sydney police ask him to look in on a family living on a forgotten back road, it doesn't look like a season of goodwill at all...