Last Fortnight on AustCrime

Summer, Adelaide, 1917. The impeccably dressed Miss Kate Cocks might look more like a schoolmistress than a policewoman, but don't let that fool you. She's a household name, wrangling wayward husbands into repentance, seeing through deceptive clairvoyants, and rescuing young women (whether they like it or not) with the help of a five-foot cane and her sassy junior constable, Ethel Bromley.

It’s 1918, in a Wellington that few people would recognise today, and two major events are about to the signing of the Armistice to end World War I, and the soldier-borne plague we now call the Spanish flu. Into this comes Wellington's only female lawyer, leading her group of Sapphist friends as they attempt to strike a blow for women’s freedom. They go head-to-head with the authorities while she finds herself acting as Crown prosecutor in the case of a wealthy socialite’s “murder” of her husband by kissing him.

They wouldn't arrest a 98 year old for murder...would they?

Following on from the events of Diamonds and Drowning, Alice is determined more than ever to keep her friends safe, while getting justice for Teresa. As she plans her next steps she is side tracked when the Silvermoon Retirement Village manager is accused of theft, and then Alice finds a dead body in her apartment.

All the evidence points to her being the killer, and she realises she is up against the most cunning opponent she's ever faced.

Maxine has been losing things lately. Her car in the shopping centre carpark. Important work files—and her job as a result. Her marbles? ‘Mild cognitive impairment’, according to the doctor. Time for a nursing home, according to her daughter, Rose.

Rose has her own troubles with a recurring vision of a locked cupboard, claustrophobic panic. Something in the shadows. Something to do with the old family house in Kutarere.

A scenic walk in nature isn’t Addison Harper’s idea of a good time, but with Sergeant Jake Murphy leading the way, he’s willing to give it a go.

After a picnic as delicious as his date, things are really looking up – that is, until Addison stumbles over something in the undergrowth. Bad news: it’s a dead body. Worse news: it’s his ex. And the last time they saw each other, a room full of people witnessed Addison wish him dead.

He should never have strayed from the path…

‘When I last saw Ashleigh, she was lying in a pool of blood . . . Her eyes were open, staring sightlessly into the sky. I’d like to think she saw the stars before she died; that in her last moments she flew, soaring on serotonin, dreamy with dopamine. I’d like to think she didn’t suffer . . .’

A beautiful young law student dies on the concrete below her third-storey window in chilly Dunedin.

It’s clear enough how she died. What isn’t is why — or who’s involved.

All she had to do now was disappear.

The Hermitage Mt Cook, New Zealand, 1946 When the volatile Stella is hired as a mountain guide she vows never to return to a life of domesticity below the snowline. With her mentor Philip and troubled returned soldier Jim she roams the Southern Alps finding freedom in her unconventional career. But Stella and her friends are powerless to prevent a tragedy which will shatter their lives.

Three women give birth in different countries and different decades. In the near future, they become neighbours in a coastal town in Aotearoa New Zealand. Single parent Keri has her hands full with four-year-old tearaway Walty and teen Wairere, a strange and gifted child, who always picks up on things that aren't hers to worry about. They live next door to Janet, a white woman with an opinion about everything, and new arrival Sera, whose family are refugees from ecological devastation in Europe.
 

On her first day back from maternity leave, Detective Sam Shephard is thrown straight into a cold-case investigation – the unsolved murder of a highly respected Anglican Priest in Dunedin.

The case has been a thorn in the side of the Police hierarchy, and for her boss it' s personal.

With all the witness testimony painting a picture of a dedicated church and family man, what possible motive could there have been for his murder?

Oak Tree Lodge is a classy inner-city boarding house with just four guest rooms. But there is nothing classy about Leo Murdoch, the proprietor, who lives upstairs and spies on his guests.

Covid-19 is sweeping the world, and the country is hours from lockdown. Meg Hart, a beautiful, backpacking tourist with nowhere to go, is desperate for a place to stay. There is one vacancy, the room previously occupied by the aspiring young actress, Chelsea Green, who disappeared two weeks earlier.

And now Meg is trapped.

Criminal psychologist Nellie Prayle loves solving murders. The more complicated, the better. But when a professor of astronomy is found dead at Tekapo’s Mt John Observatory during its internationally-attended 50th anniversary conference celebrations and Detective Jack Simmons calls on Nellie to help with the police investigation, she soon realises that this is not your typical murder – and nor are these your usual suspects.

‘No one will invest in a business focussed on family violence – it’s the opposite of sexy.’

Lauren Brown, owner of Weeping Angels, smiled. ‘Maybe to men.’

Business is booming for Weeping Angels – an agency that helps victims of family violence obtain protection orders. Lauren, who ambitiously wants to fix the justice system, contacts journalist Grace (‘Ace’) Marks to increase pressure on the government. A woman who obsessively guards her privacy and her past, Lauren knows she will need to step out of the shadows where she has lived her entire life.

'Cockroach' Karl Copley, a crackhead crim with a small brain and a big mouth, convinces his former best friend Richie McMullan - now a squeaky-clean senior cop - he can help rescue Barbara 'Barbie' Konstantinou, a high school crush apparently held for ransom by bikers in New Zealand's sunny north.

Problems pile up quickly, though, when Barbie doesn't want to go back to her effed-up family and it emerges there's much more at stake than a simple kidnapping.

1943 – Bletchley Park, England

Everybody needs good neighbours…

When Claire Corral goes missing from her home on Carnation Way, her neighbour Jamie isn’t too concerned. He’s busy—caring for his dad, recovering from a broken heart and eating himself into a bigger pair of pants.

Then the police turn up.

New Year's Eve, Loloma Island, Fiji. At one of the most exclusive island resorts in the Pacific ocean, the champagne is poured, the fireworks are ready, and the countdown to new year is just beginning. It's set to be a night that no one will forget.

Especially when a body washes up on the shore...

But it's impossible to find answers when everyone here has a motive.

Manabu Yukawa, the physicist known as "Detective Galileo," has traveled to Hari Cove, a once-popular summer resort town that has fallen on hard times. He is there to speak at a conference on a planned underwater mining operation, which has sharply divided the town. One faction is against the proposed operation, concerned about the environmental impact on the area, known for its pristine waters. The other faction, seeing no future in the town as it is, believes its only hope lies in the development project.

Verity Beresford is worried about her husband. Oliver didn’t come home last night so of course Verity goes straight to Judith Potts, Marlow’s resident amateur sleuth, for help. Oliver, founder of the Marlow Amateur Dramatic Society, had hired The Marlow Belle, a private pleasure cruiser, for an exclusive party with the MADS committee but no one remembers seeing him disembark. And then Oliver’s body washes up on the Thames with two bullet holes in him – it’s time for the Marlow Murder Club to leap into action.