The Dancing Man

The Dancing Man is set in the late 1960’s, early 70’s.
It had begun as a normal summer’s day in suburban Wahroonga on Sydney’s affluent North Shore. In the back yard of the Swain house, workmen set about making good the garden that they had disturbed when connecting the house to the new sewer mains, and removing the now redundant septic tank.
Inside, Cynthia and Peter Swain drifted through life and their marriage.
The discovery of a skeleton in the bottom of the tank put an end to their peace and quiet.
Working on the obvious assumption that a body in a septic tank was that of a murder victim, Detective Sergeant Gary Brownlow set about trying to discover who it was, when he died and why, and who killed him. His investigations lead him to believe that Cynthia Swain knew more about this than she was letting on.
Cynthia, because of Peter’s indifference toward her, was open to a sexual adventure, and Brownlow, attracted to her, was looking to add another scalp to his already crowded sexual belt, and this leads to a brief sexual relationship that Cynthia ends, for Brownlow too soon.
As his investigation gets close to the truth, Cynthia’s mind goes back twenty years to when she was a teenager approaching womanhood in this very house. A time of change and upheaval, of the strange relationship between her father and mother, and of her own sexual awakening. And of Paul Thomas, the Dancing Man of this story, Cynthia’s first love and who, when she was sixteen, seduces her while, at the same time, he was having an affair with her mother Judy Pearson.
Brownlow establishes that the body in the septic tank was that of Paul Thomas, and that Cynthia may have seen him after he was supposed to have left for England to meet up with Judy Pearson. Using his discoveries as leverage in an attempt to re-kindle his relationship with Cynthia, Brownlow arranges a meeting where he plans to confront her with his evidence. This confrontation does not end as he had planned.