Paul Harrigan

Award-winning new crime fiction: '[An] intelligent and compelling thriller that turns the notion of evil inside out' - Canberra times. Matthew Liu sees his parents gunned down on a lonely Sydney backstreet. A young woman, the killer, stares him in the face before fleeing the scene. When the police arrive, all they find is the discarded gun. Detective Inspector Paul Harrigan's unit is pitched into a high-profile investigation with little to go on. Who is the young woman? How can she have vanished into thin air? When DC Grace Riordan follows up a connection between one of the victims and a termination clinic, pieces start to fall into place, but Grace is forced to confront some personal demons. Harrigan has demons of his own to contend with. Burned badly in the past for refusing to turn a blind eye to police corruption, he suspects that his current team and investigation is being subtly sabotaged. then he discovers that his own son is in email contact with the killer and that the young woman's bloody rampage is far from over. And with a single phone call the killer draws Harrigan and Grace into her trap.

Exciting new crime from Alex Palmer, winner of the 2008 Canberra Critics Circle Award Paul Harrigan is a top cop who has survived the corruption and political manoeuvrings of the NSW Police. So far ...His partner Grace Riordan has left the Service and now works in the shadowy world of undercover intelligence - so she and Harrigan can't talk about work much. Harrigan is called to a grisly murder scene in Sydney's wealthy north: four guests are seated around the dinner table - all dead. One of them a Senator's ex-wife; one of them a missing corrupt NSW detective. And the mummified condition of the detective's body - identified by a distinctive tattoo - suggests he has been dead for quite some time ...While Harrigan is facing the demons of his past, Grace is drawn into the investigation through some very unofficial enquiries of her own. Enquiries which will lead to a flashpoint neither can predict. Politics, corruption, big business, espionage and illicit technology ... Alex Palmer weaves them all into a heart-stopping race for the truth.