Cat's Cradle

A loveless marriage becomes a tangle of hatred … but who is pulling the strings?
Sydney, 1972
When Jane Fenton returns from Australia to her childhood home in England, free from the shadow of her overbearing...Read more
Sorted on book title (not in series order)

A loveless marriage becomes a tangle of hatred … but who is pulling the strings?
Sydney, 1972
When Jane Fenton returns from Australia to her childhood home in England, free from the shadow of her overbearing...Read more

A killer’s web of lies threatens to ensnare him for ever…
Sydney, 1971
When Martin Briggs marries beautiful, wealthy Ellie Logan, he thinks his troubles are over. With the help of his wife’s...Read more


Thwarted ambition turns to murderous frustration…Sydney, 1975
Accountant Edward Piper is a discontented man. Plagued by self-doubt and patronised by his activist wife Sibyl, he yearns to follow what he believes to be his true...Read more

Families can be murder — especially when there’s a skeleton in the closet…
Sydney, 1965
Everyone agrees that the Greys are model daughters. Every Wednesday the middle-aged sisters take turns to visit their elderly mother in a...Read more

It’s impossible for a man to be killed three times … isn’t it?
Sydney, 1959
When Detective Inspector Herbert Swinton is called in to investigate the murder of William Flecker at a sophisticated house party, there’s no shortage of suspects. A well-known writer and...Read more

Peter thinks he’s pulled off the perfect crime … but if Heather’s dead, where is her body?
Sydney, 1962
Peter Baxter can remember a time when he loved his wife, the beautiful, haughty Heather...Read more

A murderous act refuses to stay buried…
Sydney, 1967
When Sarah Stephens cemented her husband Philip under the floorboards of their Sydney home, it was supposed to be a fresh start for her, liberated at last from an unhappy domestic prison.
And everyone knew...Read more

A vengeful sociopath hatches a murderous plot … but can he control its aftermath?
Sydney, 1973
Ned Paine is a discontented man. Full of resentment for his estranged wife Norah, the self-obsessed Sydney antique dealer fantasises about a life free from her shadow....Read more

Suburbia can be murder … especially with a neighbour like Rose …
Sydney, 1961
When Bob Clifton witnesses a disturbing event in a block of flats near his home, everyone tells him he must be imagining things.
But Bob can’t ignore his suspicion that he’s...Read more

Can Richard escape the consequences of a crime he didn’t commit?
Sydney, 1975
A man is wanted for murder. A man who looks like Richard Ross, drives a car like his, and was in the same place at the same time....Read more
Re-reading any of Pat Flower's excellent books is always a very bittersweet experience. Reading SHADOW SHOW even more so, as my edition was published after Flower died, from the effects of pentobarbitone poisoning, taken intentionally, in September 1977.
Patricia Mary Bryson...Read more

An unconventional road trip ends in a terrible crime…
Europe, 1974
Rick Coleman and Emily Sutton make unlikely travelling companions. But when a chance meeting results in a road trip with a...Read more

Cruel, egotistical Noel, a thistledown, a cheap balloon whisking willy-nilly away from the piercing, deflating needle of her fine judgment. Geraldine needs to keep her cool through the highs and the lows, but it's maddening when Noel keeps missing the point. The trek up north was grueling,...Read more
VANISHING POINT by Pat Flower was originally published in 1975, and re-released by Wakefield Press as part of their Crime Classics series in 1993. It is the first of three important thrillers written by this author before her suicide in 1978.
The Wakefield edition has an...Read more

A Sydney detective has his work cut out when murder strikes on the shop floor…
Sydney, 1958
For Gloria Spink, other people are mere stepping stones on her personal path to success. Smart, sophisticated and utterly selfish, the wife of Spinks Store’s managing director...Read more

He doesn’t speak a word of French — but the language of murder is spoken everywhere…
Provence, 1960
When a chance meeting in Provence leads Detective Inspector Herbert Swinton to the strange vineyard home of...Read more