Series: Peninsula Crimes

Hal Challis is in trouble at home and abroad: carpeted by the boss for speaking out about police budget cuts, missing his lover, Ellen Destry, who is overseas on a study tour. But there's plenty to keep his mind off his problems. A rapist in a police uniform stalks Challis's Peninsula beat, there is a serial armed robber headed in...

Ten-year-old Katie Blasko is missing. Detective Sergeant Ellen Destry, alert to rumours of a paedophile ring operating on the Peninsula, is thinking abduction. Her colleagues are thinking bad family, truancy. Her boss is thinking about the media. And everyone, including Ellen, is wondering whether she's good enough to handle this without D. I. Challis. But Hal Challis is a thousand...

When hordes of 18-year-old schoolies descend on the Mornington Peninsula to celebrate the last of their exams, the overstretched police of Waterloo expect reports of party drugs and underage drinkers. Maybe even drink-spiking and sexual assault. They don't count on a brutal bashing that attracts political attention. The victim is connected, and now Detective Inspector Hal Challis is facing interference...

An unidentified man is fished out of the sea with an anchor strapped to his waist. For Detective Inspector Hal Challis, this sparks the beginning of a chilling series of shotgun killings. As Challis investigates, a farmer on the peninsula erupts into violence and becomes the target of a massive manhunt. Meanwhile, Challis's own emotional life is strained, and some...