Under the Cold Bright Lights
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4.3 • 19 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A Melbourne cold-case investigator will stop at nothing to find justice in this gripping standalone police procedural from an Australian crime fiction legend.
“Flawlessly combines the many storylines into a twisty final product that will surprise even the savviest of readers.” —Shelf Awareness
The young detectives think Alan Auhl is washed up, but that doesn’t faze him. He does things his own way—and gets results.
He still lives with his ex-wife, off and on, in a big house full of random boarders and hard-luck stories. And he’s still a cop, even though he retired from Homicide some years ago.
He works cold cases now. Like the death of John Elphick—his daughters are still convinced he was murdered; the coroner is not so sure. Or the skeleton that’s just been found under a concrete slab. Or the doctor who killed two wives and a girlfriend, and left no evidence at all.
Auhl will stick with these cases until justice is done. One way or another.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this beautifully written if flawed thriller from Ned Kelly Award winner Disher (Signal Loss), former homicide detective Alan Auhl, who has come out of retirement to handle cold cases, and his team look into the discovery of a body found under an old concrete slab in a rural area near Melbourne, Australia. Their first task is to identify the Slab Man, a shooting victim, then to figure out who killed him and why. Another case for Auhl centers on a self-important doctor whose first and second wives died mysteriously, and who now believes his third wife wants him dead. Meanwhile, Auhl is managing a strange household of lodgers, including a fearful young mother involved in a bitter custody dispute over her 10-year-old daughter. Auhl crosses all kinds of lines to help people. The focus on such crimes as child abuse and religious scamming serves to show how justice is rarely gotten through institutional means. Unfortunately, readers will struggle to keep track of the multiple story lines. This is a rare misstep for Disher.
