<i>'The godfather of Australian crime fiction.'</i><br/><br/>Wealthy Frederick Farmer died when his weekender burned to the ground. Death by accident, the police found. But his daughter, Dr Elizabeth Farmer, a feisty academic who resembles the younger Germaine Greer, hires Cliff Hardy to investigate. Is her only motive jealousy of her father's attractive second wife, now very rich?<br/><br/>Hardy's search takes him from the Illawarra escarpment to Wollongong and Port Kembla, and the police are far from co-operative as he tries to unravel the truth. He has his hands full when a panic-stricken call leads to a second case the search for the precocious daughter of Marisha Karatsky, an exotic, dark-eyed interpreter who gets well and truly under Hardy's guard.<br/><br/>Hardy has narrow escapes and people die as his probing hits nerves. Corrupt cops, compromised insurance agents, feral bikies as well as a few good guys are drawn into the maelstrom. Hardy battles on through personal turmoil and vicious opposition with all outcomes uncertain and justice a remote ideal.<br/><br/>'I don't know how many Cliff Hardy novels there are, but there aren't enough.' - Kerry Greenwood, <i>The Sydney Morning Herald</i><br/><br/>'Hardy is a wonderful creation still, under Corris's magisterial narrative control, capable of those odd echoes and resonances, the elegiac interludes, that characterise the best crime writing.' - Graeme Blundell, <i>The Weekend Australian<br/><br/></i>'There has been no more efficient, entertaining and amusing writer of detective thrillers in Australia than Peter Corris.' - <i>The Age</i>