Diamond Dove

Winner of the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Crime Fiction 2007.

Emily Tempest has been away from Central Australia for a long time-uni, travel, dead-end jobs-finding trouble all over the world. Something has drawn her back to Moonlight Downs, the community she left half a lifetime ago. Not much has changed; the barefoot kids are bush mechanics now, but Emily still doesn't know if she belongs in the Aboriginal world or the white. And true to form, there's trouble.

Within hours of her arrival, an old friend is brutally murdered and mutilated. An old enemy is the only suspect, until the feisty Emily starts asking questions. Take a nail-biting mystery, an epic setting and a heroine with a talent for stirring things up then throw in an affectionate flogging of outback Australia's melanoma-encrusted hide, and Diamond Dove may be the wittiest and most gripping Australian crime novel you'll read this year.