EBOOK
About
Emily Tempest is appointed an aboriginal community police officer for the Moonlight Downs station. Investigating the possible murder of an elderly geologist, she encounters Danny, an emotionally fragile Stonehouse mob teenager who is traumatized by the image of "poison flowing green." The terrain of Australia, a Japanese rock garden painter, a rash of unexplained illnesses, and the implausibility of two elderly friends killing each other present Emily with a unique puzzle. Praise for the Emily Tempest series
"Beguiling first mystery . . . wonderful."
-The New York Times Book Review
"There's a lot of guts, bravery and bravura packed into Emily's compact frame. Her understanding of life in the Outback, its people's idiosyncrasies and their deep-rooted culture serves as an informative travelogue. But it's her dogged determination to discover the killer of an old geologist that makes the book so enticing. Emily is an admirable addition to the list of female investigators on the international fiction scene."
-USA Today
"A hymn to the wit, courage, stark beauty and the power of dreaming of a unique people. One cannot help but be enriched by it."
-Anne Perry
"Startling turns of phrase, vivid Outback setting, and rich rendering of cultural differences. . . . All in all, the novel is a corker, engaging from page 1 and on through to an ending that pulls out all the stops."
-The Boston Globe
"A delightful, engaging book."
-The Philadelphia Inquirer
"Perfect for mystery fans who are craving new horizons."
-Library Journal Adrian Hyland won Australia's 2007 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Novel for Moonlight Downs. Its follow-up, Gunshot Road, was runner-up for the Colin Roderick Award for Australian literature. He spent many years in the Northern Territory living and working among the indigenous people. He lives in Victoria. INITIATIONS
I CLOSED MY eyes, felt the ragged harmonies flowing through my head.
Pitch dark, but the dawn couldn't be far off. Hazel on the ground beside me, singing softly. Painted sisters dancing all around us, dust swirling up from bare feet. Cocky feathers catching firelight. Coloured skirts, circles and curves.
It was Young Man's Time in Bluebush. Boys were being made into men. Here in the women's camp, we were singing them goodbye.
The men were a couple of hundred yards to the west: a column of ghostly figures weaving in and out of a row of rattling branches. Clapsticks and boomerangs pounded the big bass rolling rhythm of the earth.
Gypsy Watson, our boss, the kirta, struck up another verse of the fire song: 'Warlu wiraji, warluku…'
The rest of us tagged along behind.
My breasts, cross-hatched with ochre, moved gently as I turned and took a look around.
You couldn't help but smile. The town mob: fractured and deracinated they might have been, torn apart by idleness and violence, by Hollywood and booze. But moments like these, when people came together, when they tried to recover the core, they gave you hope.
It was the songs that did it: the women didn't so much sing them as pick them up like radio receivers. You could imagine those great song cycles rolling across country, taking their shape from what they encountered: scraps of language, minerals and dreams, a hawk's flight, a feather's fall, the flash of a meteorite. The resonance of that music is everywhere, even here, on the outskirts of the whitefeller town, out among the rubbish dumps and truck yards. It sings along the wires, it rings off bitumen and steel.
A disturbance-a slurred, drunken scream-somewhere to my right.
Maybe I spoke too soon.
Two women were yelling at each other. One was sitting down, obscured by the crowd. The other was all too visible: Rosie Brambles, looking like she'd just wandered out of the Drunks' Camp.
Rambling Rosie, her dress a hectic red, her headscarf smeared with sweat and grease:
"Beguiling first mystery . . . wonderful."
-The New York Times Book Review
"There's a lot of guts, bravery and bravura packed into Emily's compact frame. Her understanding of life in the Outback, its people's idiosyncrasies and their deep-rooted culture serves as an informative travelogue. But it's her dogged determination to discover the killer of an old geologist that makes the book so enticing. Emily is an admirable addition to the list of female investigators on the international fiction scene."
-USA Today
"A hymn to the wit, courage, stark beauty and the power of dreaming of a unique people. One cannot help but be enriched by it."
-Anne Perry
"Startling turns of phrase, vivid Outback setting, and rich rendering of cultural differences. . . . All in all, the novel is a corker, engaging from page 1 and on through to an ending that pulls out all the stops."
-The Boston Globe
"A delightful, engaging book."
-The Philadelphia Inquirer
"Perfect for mystery fans who are craving new horizons."
-Library Journal Adrian Hyland won Australia's 2007 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Novel for Moonlight Downs. Its follow-up, Gunshot Road, was runner-up for the Colin Roderick Award for Australian literature. He spent many years in the Northern Territory living and working among the indigenous people. He lives in Victoria. INITIATIONS
I CLOSED MY eyes, felt the ragged harmonies flowing through my head.
Pitch dark, but the dawn couldn't be far off. Hazel on the ground beside me, singing softly. Painted sisters dancing all around us, dust swirling up from bare feet. Cocky feathers catching firelight. Coloured skirts, circles and curves.
It was Young Man's Time in Bluebush. Boys were being made into men. Here in the women's camp, we were singing them goodbye.
The men were a couple of hundred yards to the west: a column of ghostly figures weaving in and out of a row of rattling branches. Clapsticks and boomerangs pounded the big bass rolling rhythm of the earth.
Gypsy Watson, our boss, the kirta, struck up another verse of the fire song: 'Warlu wiraji, warluku…'
The rest of us tagged along behind.
My breasts, cross-hatched with ochre, moved gently as I turned and took a look around.
You couldn't help but smile. The town mob: fractured and deracinated they might have been, torn apart by idleness and violence, by Hollywood and booze. But moments like these, when people came together, when they tried to recover the core, they gave you hope.
It was the songs that did it: the women didn't so much sing them as pick them up like radio receivers. You could imagine those great song cycles rolling across country, taking their shape from what they encountered: scraps of language, minerals and dreams, a hawk's flight, a feather's fall, the flash of a meteorite. The resonance of that music is everywhere, even here, on the outskirts of the whitefeller town, out among the rubbish dumps and truck yards. It sings along the wires, it rings off bitumen and steel.
A disturbance-a slurred, drunken scream-somewhere to my right.
Maybe I spoke too soon.
Two women were yelling at each other. One was sitting down, obscured by the crowd. The other was all too visible: Rosie Brambles, looking like she'd just wandered out of the Drunks' Camp.
Rambling Rosie, her dress a hectic red, her headscarf smeared with sweat and grease: