Kit O'Malley

Private investigator Kit O'Malley has had more exciting cases than following a wealthy client's husband, but Celia Robinson is paying big money to find out what the libidinous Geoffrey is up to with a blonde, a redhead and entrepreneur Ian Dalkeith and his group of shady businessmen. Enduring a heatwave and fighting the inanimate objects that are out to get her are the hardest parts of Kit's assignment until a body is found in the Robinson's ornamental fish pond and everything takes a turn for the weird and nasty. While the cops do their own thing, Celia's daughter Quinn hires Kit to find the killer and her mother's missing butler. What Kit doesn't count on is Quinn's determination to be involved in the case. To make matters worse she brings along her lawyer, Alexis Cazenove, who is as stunning as she is smart and has an extremely disconcerting effect on Kit's sense of balance. After a near miss with a homicidal driver, Kit knows she's getting close to something - even if the truth seems to be that everyone has a secret. And then there's the question of just who the mysterious Mike Finnigan is following; is it Geoffrey, Dalkeith or Kit herself?

Poison pens can draw blood. And that is exactly why TV presenter Rebecca Jones hires private eye Kit O'Malley to investigate the threats against her. But the trouble with being tenacious, tough, and too smart for her own good is that everybody else wants her on their team. As if trying to keep Rebecca alive and on the air wasn't enough, Kit is beset by a clutch of other people's catastrophes that require her very particular skills to resolve. And, as Kit is the detective who can't say no, before she knows it she is up to her eyes in the worst that Australia's criminal minds can throw her way. Money laundering, sordid sexual shenanigans, abduction, political sleaze, and murder among Melbourne's movers and shakers threaten to swamp Kit as she picks her way through the morass of double-dealing, treachery, and outright greed. As if that's not enough, the beautiful and sexy Alex Casenove sweeps back into her life, reminding Kit that love is almost as deadly as hate and that murder never happens at a convenient time. Bleeding Hearts, the sequel to the highly acclaimed debut Blood Guilt, is a tightly plotted romp through the dark underbelly of Australia's most-cultured city, vibrantly demonstrating that even the heartless bleed.

Third in the PI series, Thicker than Water finds Kit O'Malley trying not to become too embroiled in the feud between three Melbourne crime families, while dealing with ghosts from her past, and a strange missing persons case. The women's bar known as Angie's is the last place anyone expected to find the dead body of known-criminal Gerry Anders, and O'Malley soon discovers that helping her family of friends out of trouble can be just as dangerous as facing a deranged killer - only more complicated. She has to deal with an old nemesis from her days of the force; the matriarch of the notorious Riley clan, who takes a liking to her; a troublemaking journalist; and a Romeo and Juliet scenario. Kit's ex-partner, Detective Inspector Jon Marek, is not coping with the ugly reality of his on-going hunt for a serial killer; and, as the Feds are still spying on everyone, Kit's courtship of the gorgeous Alex Cazenove remains under wraps. To cap it all off a good friend and his strange Russian-American client go missing, and suddenly everything points to old grudges and unresolved family tension. Everything, that is, except the very strange connection to Melbourne's Bubble-Wrap Killer.