Broken Bay
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Old loyalties and decades-long feuds rise to the surface in this stunning crime novel, set in a spectacular Australian landscape known for its jagged cliffs and hidden caves.
Detective Sergeant Mark Ariti has taken a few days’ holiday in Broken Bay at precisely the wrong time. The small fishing town on South Australia’s Limestone Coast is now the scene of a terrible tragedy.
Renowned cave diver Mya Rennik has drowned while exploring a sinkhole on the land of wealthy farmer Frank Doyle. As the press descends, Mark’s boss orders him to stay put and assist the police operation.
But when they retrieve Mya's body, a whole new mystery is opened up, around the disappearance of a young local woman twenty years before . . .
Suddenly Mark is diving deep into the town’s history - and in particular the simmering rivalry between its two most prominent families, the Doyles and Sinclairs.
Then a murder takes place at the Sinclairs’ old home – and Mark is left wondering which is more dangerous: Broken Bay’s hidden subterranean world or the secretive town above it . . .
‘Margaret Hickey blazed on to the Australian crime writing scene with Cutters End… [She] excels at using the setting to add tension and, here, it is the South Australian coast and limestone caves . . . A fresh setting for a crime novel, and the underwater scenes are suffocatingly horrifying.’ Weekend Australian
‘While the story of small-town loves, rivalries and misdemeanours is well done, it is, as always, Hickey’s observations of rural life that are completely engaging.’ Sunday Age
‘This is the third novel featuring Detective Mark Ariti, and a ripper it is too . . . A fabulous addition to the wealth of Bush Noir novels available, and I recommend it highly.’ Good Reading
'A tour de force.' Australian Women's Weekly on Cutters End
'Astonishingly assured crime novel. A pitch perfect outback noir.' Weekend Australian on Cutters End
'Hickey nicely layers the intrigue as we follow the always likeable Ariti, who once again discovers just how secretive and bizarre life in the rural hinterland can be.' Sydney Morning Herald on Stone Town
Cutters End was the winner of the BAD Danger Prize 2022 and was shortlisted for the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction 2022.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Broken Bay, with its whipping winds, perilous cliffs and closely kept secrets, is the perfect setting for Margaret Hickey’s latest superbly suspenseful Mark Ariti novel. The Detective Senior Sergeant is on an ocean fishing trip when a cave diving expedition at a nearby farm’s sinkhole goes wrong. Despite being on leave, Mark follows his curiosity and is drawn into the case as another body is found—one that’s been suspended in the shimmering depths for much longer. Two families with a long history in the town are at the centre of the mystery, so Mark and the team must look to the past to solve the case. Hickey has a talent for dialogue and her ensemble of characters is authentically rural in a way that doesn’t feel clichéd. Broken Bay is a sophisticated pageturner about risk taking, jealousy and tangled shared histories.
Customer Reviews
Loved it
Depth of the characters gives you a window into the world of cave diving and real seaside communities, where lives are entwined from birth to death in complex and confusing ways, just like the small towns I’ve known!
Enjoyable read
I think this is the best book of three written so far. I look forward to the next books
Engaging, but…
I enjoy this author’s books but this was so full of errors it detracted from the narrative. First and foremost, scuba tanks are filled with compressed air, not oxygen. Basic research with any dive shop would have revealed this. Oxygen is toxic at depth. Second, no professional cave diver dives without a buddy. South Australian lobsters (crayfish) don’t have claws. Sloppy research, poor editing.