cover:
Deep in the concrete of a Bankstown demolition site are buried two bodies and thirty years of secrets.

Sydney, 1992. Nhu 'Ned' Kelly is a young detective making her way in what was, until recently, the best police force money could buy. Now ICAC has the infamous Roger Rogerson in the spotlight, and the old ways are out. Ned's sex and background still make her an outsider in the force, but Sydney is changing, expanding, modernising, and so is the Job.

When two bodies are found in the foundations of an old building in Sydney's west, Ned is drawn into the city's past: old rivalries, old secrets and old wrongs. As she works to discover who the bones belong to – and who dumped them there – she begins to uncover secrets that threaten to expose not only the rotten core of the police force, but also the dark mysteries of her own family.

P.M. Newton worked in the New South Wales Police Force for thirteen years. Her debut is both a gripping crime novel and a brilliant portrait of Sydney's recent past.

Loved it! This is a gritty, police detective fiction written by a woman who worked for 13 years in the 80s & 90s in the NSW Police. I found it gripping & very well-written, but not an easy read. I didn't think I was going to like it at first, the opening chapter was very confronting, but I settled in & really wanted to find out what happened to Ned. I couldn't read it for long sessions because it was so confronting, but it was something I had to keep going back to, & it has left a lasting impression.

Although this isn't all explosions & incredibly talented & wealthy serial killers, it's not for the faint-hearted. There's some history here - Vietnam & Aboriginal-clearing, & police corruption - this is the time of the ICAC trial into such corruption, 1990.

I loved travelling around Sydney with Ned, trying to remember what it was like in 1990, in the post-recession years. I remember those huge holes everywhere as developers ran out of money after knocking the lovely old buildings down & being unable to build the new ones. Property prices were just starting to rise at ridiculous rates & everyone was renovating madly - particularly in the inner city. I wish I'd bought a house in Greenwich back then.

Sent to LadyIndigo for the July 2015 Southern Cross Book Exchange.

thankyou thankyou for this wishlist book forthe southern cross exchange and yet another surprise bundle of books

;)

thankyou so much for sending me this to read, catsalive
i don't know that we have enough choice in aussie crime/police procedurals - set in australia, written by aus authors

a crime novel should not ask you to suspend disbelief - there were a couple of things that required suspension, but overall is was a good read
the links between the investigation, ned and her family, especially her parents were unbelievable
i am always surprised in novels about 'oversharing' - police, i am sure, are subject to privacy and confidentiality rules - i know that federal public servants have always had strict rules around confidentiality - so when ned shares what she has discovered so far with her sister and with the aboriginal legal guy is surely inappropriate - as a reader i have seen her discover this information, so having it repeated and repeated in conversations with people outside the police force really grated with me - especially as this story had the police corruption royal commission in the background

the story shows the tedium of paperwork and the less glamorous side of policing - it is not all action and guns
i had sympathy for the mabo character do we really listen to people or just listen with our assumptions blocking the mesage? perhaps the mabo nickname was just a little too early...

i grew up in canberra and goulburn was just down the road - i remember the days before the bypass and the uproar about the bypass and then the beautiful transformation of the town after all the trucks and through traffic left the main street - we young ones had our own backroad detour to miss that main road

and this tells you how old i am - i had not heard of 'massive attack' - i thought they were an invented group and lo and behold 'massive attack' is on the play list of someone interviewed on radio this week - and so drwiki tells me they are a 'trip hop' group out of the uk - trip hop? a genre of electronic music in the early 1990s ... that explains my ignorance - electronic music not one of my music genres

on a side note, it is always interesting to read an uncorrected proof - to see how how it prints before the final final edit - tho i wonder why some of the typos cannot be fixed before committing to such a print run - surely it is an expensive editing option

overall a good read and i look forward to reading more of pm's work
;)

A wishlist book for Mz January/February

Happy reading
;)

My first year participating in the Southern Cross Book Exchange, and my parcels have begun to arrive!
This Australian author was recommended to me by a fellow BCer a while back now, and this book (her debut novel) has been sat patiently on my Wishlist ever since. I very much look forward to reading this one. Thank you very much LadyIndigo.
2016 Southern Cross Book Exchange

MY REVIEW:
A pretty hard slog up until the last 75 pages or so.
Liked the storyline and the idea behind it, it also tackles some very big taboo subjects...but it just wasn't all that polished.


This book is off on it's travels as a surprise Wishlist RABCK which ties in nicely with the Send your current read RABCK

(I always add physical postage stamps to my packages. If you are not a collector yourself, check out the I collect postage stamps because... thread to find them a happy home.)

Received in the mail. Many thanks.

Left at the Street Library.

Release #1 for the 2018 The The Challenge.