AustLit

'An early-morning murder in the park of a quiet country town. Two hitch-hiking girls, one of them guilty - one of them a liar.

'Four years on, Marion still has to know who killed her brother. The police, the press and ordinary people have lost interest in the case. She needs to call on Jefferson Shields - she's been told that he solves puzzles.

'You'll be baffled to the end of The Souvenir.' (Publisher's blurb [Wakefield Press ed.])

'An anti-Vietnam War demonstration by angry Australian college students in the sixties results in the death of a young woman marcher. No one seems to know how she came to be struck down. But as the police seek to charge one of the leaders of the protest, Jefferson Shields, a private detective, eliminates the most likely suspects and, a la G. K. Chesterton, identifies the only possible culprit.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Soho Press).

'A ten minute joyride turns into manslaughter as two teenagers hit-and-run. This then meticulously traces the aftermath as Julius and Barry try to find the old woman whose dog they also killed, who may or may not have seen them. And finally it leads to murder as Barry becomes obsessed with the need to destroy all evidence. As taut as the youngsters' nerves and an indictment of the too typical community whose see-nothing-say-nothing attitude precipitates further disasters.'

Source: Kirkus Reviews.