Cliff Hardy, with his PI license cancelled and his career in Sydney at an end, is preparing for a trip overseas. Cleaning out his office, he comes across an open filean unresolved case from the 1980s. As he starts reading he’s thrown back to his investigation of the disappearance of Justin Hampshire. At first glance this investigation was a straightforward missing person matter, but the investigation took on twists and turns involving military history, Sydney criminals, and corruption at high levels that caused it to remain unsolved. The Hampshire case took Cliff from the south coast to the Blue Mountains and posed some unresolved questions which have preyed on his mind continuously since it opened. Now, 20 years later, will he finally be able to put the case to rest?
Cliff Hardy, the Australian private investigator, has had his license revoked. With a bit of money put aside and no pressing matters to attend to, he decides to take a trip and perhaps think about what he might want to do with himself, now that he has no career. While he’s packing up some old papers, he comes across an open case from the late 1980s. It was a particularly intricate case that began with a missing-persons investigation; remembering it now, Hardy is transported back to the (relatively) early days of his career, when he was younger, brasher, and perhaps a bit more foolhardy. After Appeal Denied (2008), readers might have wondered if the Hardy series was coming to an end. Thankfully, this doesn’t appear to be the case, although this “placeholder” novel (which takes us out of sequence, into the past) could be the author’s way of figuring out in what direction he wants to take the series. Whatever the reason for the journey down memory lane, fans of this consistently entertaining series will be thrilled to see that Hardy doesn’t appear to be going anywhere just yet. –David Pitt
Review
“Fans of this consistently entertaining series will be thrilled to see that Hardy doesn’t appear to be going anywhere just yet.” Booklist
About the Author
Peter Corris is the author of Appeal Denied, The Coast Road, Saving Billie, The Undertow, and many other titles in the bestselling Cliff Hardy series.
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