Showing results by author "Phillip Strang" in All Categories

An Old Fort in Sydney Harbour – The body of a woman missing for seventeen years. It’s murder, but after so long, can it be solved? Sergeant Natalie Campbell and Inspector Haddock are resolute that it can. But then, there’s the complication of the murdered woman’s father, the bombastic, bullying Bernie Cornell. One of Australia’s richest men, but he’s closing in on death due to old age and ill health. There’s no shortage of intrigue, no shortage of potential murderers. Another gripping thriller, Natalie Campbell and Inspector Haddock at their very best.

Detective Jake Morrison thought his transfer to rural South Australia was career suicide—until he discovers a body in the abandoned shearing shed at Thornfield Station. What appears to be a workplace accident soon reveals itself as cold-blooded murder. Station manager Gareth Sullivan was killed with a wool press handle, his body moved to cover up the crime. As Morrison digs deeper into the isolated sheep station's finances, he uncovers a web of embezzlement, gambling debts, and desperate choices. When Morrison identifies bookkeeper Bronwyn Hayes as his prime suspect, her world comes ...

Detective Alex Reilly thought his transfer to the remote desert town of Coober Pedy would be a quiet assignment—a chance to rebuild his damaged career far from the spotlight. But when Harold Finch, part-owner of the town's vital water supply, is found dead in his underground home, what appears to be a tragic accident quickly reveals itself as something far more sinister. As Reilly investigates, he discovers that Harold's death is connected to a sophisticated conspiracy targeting the community's most precious resource: water. Environmental engineer Daphne Traynor seems helpful at first, ...

When traditional owner Curtis Brennan is found dead among the sacred granite formations of Karlu Karlu, Detective Senior Constable Ruby Mackenzie expects a straightforward climbing accident investigation in Australia's remote Northern Territory. But climbing chalk on rocks that no Aboriginal person would ever touch tells a different story. Someone has been violating sacred sites for profit, and Curtis died trying to stop them. Ruby's investigation uncovers a thriving illegal tourism operation that has been exploiting Aboriginal culture for years, bringing unauthorized visitors to ceremonial...

A Heavy Metal Concert. An Island in the Harbour. The Lead Singer of One of the Bands is Murdered. Was the murderer the woman he had just made love to or a jealous paramour, or was the motive more obscure? It was an island prison in colonial days, then a shipbuilding facility, and now a venue for concerts and tourists, with some camping overnight and others wandering around the engineering workshops or the ruins of the prison. Death wasn't uncommon in its earlier, more violent days, but not in the present, and not at a concert, but Alan Greenworthy had died. Would others? Another gripping ...

A Genetically-Engineered Virus. The Ultimate Biological weapon. A World under Threat! In the shadow of impending doom, a chilling prophecy unfolds—fueled by stark reality yet draped in the cloak of fiction. Brace yourself for a narrative that plunges into the depths of horror, where a relentless virus threatens to annihilate seventy to eighty percent of the world's population. This merciless contagion pays no heed to religion, politics, or ethnicity; it is a pandemic of unprecedented proportions. The ominous saga begins with a sinister trial in Afghanistan, escalating to the release of ...

The death of Old Joe, a homeless man on Darlinghurst Road, seemed inevitable—until the autopsy revealed it was murder. Darlinghurst Road, once the beating heart of Sydney's red-light district, is where the past lingers in the shadows. However, the city's Eastern Suburbs are not known for bloodshed. When a second victim, an affluent woman from exclusive Point Piper, is found with her throat cut, the divide between Sydney's elite and its outcasts grows more sinister. Detective Gary Haddock has seen it all in Homicide, but even he is baffled by the lack of connection between the murders. ...

In the relentless throes of a heart-wrenching drama, Kate McDonald's very existence teeters on the precipice of despair. Trapped between the insidious clutches of a merciless Slave Trader and the fervent desperation of her father, who holds the ransom for her release, the question looms: can Steve Case and his valiant team pull off a daring rescue in the dwindling hours? As the ticking clock casts an ominous shadow, the Baptist Mission becomes the grim stage for a tragedy in three acts. A fiery chapel claims the lives of the Pastor and his wife, while a courageous soul meets a bullet ...

At the epicentre, the collision of organized crime, drug smuggling, and Islamic fundamentalism reverberates with a thunderous intensity, weaving a tapestry intricate with complexity and shadows. Malika, ensnared within the perilous underbelly of this world, nervously awaits payment in the form of heroin fragments amidst the chilling desolation of a village near the Afghan border. Here, where an unforgiving coldness pervades, clandestine dealings unfold against a grim backdrop. The village's lone sanctuary lies in the women who, for a price, offer a transient spectacle and surrender to those...

Russia and America face each other across the northern border of Afghanistan. World War 3 is about to break out and no one is backing off. And all because a team of academics in New York postulated how to extract the vast untapped mineral wealth of Afghanistan. Steve Case is in the middle of it, and his position is looking very precarious. Will the Taliban find him before the Americans get him out? Or is he doomed, as is the rest of the world?

A day at the races for Detective Inspector Tremayne, idyllic at the outset, soon changes. A horse is dead, and then the owner's daughter is found murdered, and Tremayne's there when the body is discovered. The question is, was Tremayne set up, in the wrong place at the right time? He's the cast-iron alibi for one of the suspects, and he knows that one murder leads to two, and more often than not, to three.

There's a secret, that much is certain, but who knows? The missing actress? The executive producer, his eavesdropping assistant? Or the actor who portrayed her fictional brother on the Soap Opera? DCI Isaac Cook of the Murder Investigation Team at Challis Street Police Station in London is searching for the missing woman. Why has he been taken away from more important crimes to search for the woman? It's not the first time she's gone missing, and why does everyone assume she's been murdered?

An abandoned church in a village set in time-the ideal setting for murder. Detective Inspector Tremayne and his sergeant, Clare Yarwood, are hard pushed to solve the crime and to stay alive.

When Detective Constable Lillian Tate arrives at a remote paleontological research site in the harsh Nullarbor Plain, she expects a routine missing person case. Dr. Noah Henshaw, a respected scientist studying ancient fossils, has vanished into the red dust of the Australian desert. What begins as a straightforward welfare check quickly transforms into something more sinister. The discovery of Dr. Henshaw's body reveals a brutal murder that shatters the quiet academic world of fossil research and threatens to expose secrets that powerful people will kill to protect. As Tate delves deeper ...

Detective Senior Constable Riley Murphy thought Lightning Ridge was career exile—a remote opal mining town where the biggest crimes were petty theft and neighbourly disputes. Then respected opal dealer Elena Kozlov is found brutally murdered in her ransacked workshop, and Riley's routine investigation spirals into something far more dangerous. Elena wasn't killed for her valuable stones—she was eliminated for asking the wrong questions about suspicious corporate activity. As Riley digs deeper, she uncovers Asset Beta, a covert operative who's been surveilling Lightning Ridge residents ...

When Detective Senior Constable Sarah Chen finds prominent Aboriginal rights lawyer David Namatjira dead at the bottom of Emily Gap, what appears to be a hiking accident quickly reveals itself as calculated murder. David's death coincides with the systematic ransacking of his Legal Aid office, where crucial files documenting mining company corruption have been stolen. His legal challenges cost Northern Territory Minerals millions while protecting sacred Aboriginal sites from illegal exploration, giving corporate executives powerful motives for eliminating their most effective opponent. But ...

One murderer, two bodies, two locations, and the murders have been committed within an hour of the other. There's a connection, but what is it? They're separated by a couple of miles, and neither woman has anything in common with the other. Isaac Cook and his team at Challis Street Police Station are baffled as to why. One of the women is young and wealthy, the daughter of a famous man; the other is poor and hardworking and unknown.

He was thought to be dead, until he returns to exact revenge against those who had blighted his life. His only concern is to protect his wife and daughter. He will stop at nothing to achieve his aim.

Someone had once told Detective Inspector Keith Tremayne that some people were lucky and some weren't. Tremayne knew only one thing: the man lying dead in a pool of blood had qualified on the lucky after winning sixty-eight million pounds on a lottery ticket, but now his luck had run out. Tremayne knew the victim, Alan Winters; even knew his family. The man with all his new wealth had not hidden behind closed doors, fending off the scrounging relatives, the newly-found friends. That wasn't Winters's style. He had been out and about, driving expensive cars, living well.

The man was not meant to die; the daggers were only theatrical props, plastic and harmless. A summer's night, a production of Julius Caesar among the ruins of an Anglo-Saxon fort. Detective Inspector Tremayne is there with his sergeant, Clare Yarwood. The assassination scene, the man collapses to the ground, Brutus defending his actions, Mark Antony's rebuke.