AustLit

'It is November 12, 1975. Australia has been thrown into political upheaval with the sacking the previous day of Gough Whitlam as Prime Minister. At Balmain Boys High School, teacher Susan Ross is plunged into her own state of turmoil following the murder of the school's science master - gassed in his own laboratory. Who killed him? The problem is there is no shortage of people who might have wanted him dead: the school's bad boy, the headmaster, the impeccable school captain, the rather vague English master - and that's just the beginning.'

Source: publisher's blurb

'Whenever I see a girl with a gold bikini, I think of Princess Leia. Here on the Gold Coast, gold bikinis are common, so I think of Princess Leia a lot.

'Eighteen-year-old Olivia Grace has deferred her law degree and ducked out of her friends' gap-year tour of Asia. Instead, she's fulfilling her childhood dream of becoming a private investigator, following in the footsteps of Nancy Drew and Veronica Mars - who taught her everything she knows, including a solid line in quick-quipping repartee, the importance of a handbag full of disguises, and a way of mixing business with inconvenient chemistry.

'Playing Watson to the Sherlock of her childhood friend, detective agency owner Rosco (once the Han Solo to her Princess Leia), Olivia pursues a routine cheating husband case from the glitzy Gold Coast to Insta-perfect Byron Bay, where she faces yoga wars, dirty whale activism, and a guru who's kind of a creep.

'Olivia Grace is a teenage screwball heroine for the #metoo era, and The Girl with the Gold Bikini is a body-positive detective romp, rich with pop-culture pleasures.'  (Publication summary)