Promise
Tony Cavanaugh
Top Homicide cop Darian Richards has been seeking out monsters for too long. He has promised one too many victim’s families he will find the answers they need and it’s taken its toll. After surviving a gunshot wound to the head he calls it quits and retires to the Sunshine Coast in an attempt to leave the demons behind. But he should have realised, there are demons everywhere and no place is safe. A serial killer is prowling the Sunshine Coast area and Darian tries to ignore the fact his experience could make a difference hunting him down.
All he wants is to sit at the end of his jetty on the Noosa River and ignore the fact that girls from the area have vanished over the past fourteen months. All blonde and pretty. Youngest: 13. Oldest: 16. He knows they are all dead but the cops were saying ‘missing’ or ‘vanished . That s what you have to say if you don t have a body.
Jenny Brown was the first. She vanished sometime after 4 in the afternoon, Saturday 15 October the previous year. Except for her parents and her friends and everybody who knew her, it was thought she was just a runaway. Especially by the cops who allowed a good two or three minutes before arriving at that conclusion. By the time they’d reached the gate to the front yard of her house, before they d even walked across the road and climbed into their cruiser, they would’ve forgotten Jenny Brown even existed.
But then others disappeared and they couldn’t call them all runaways. Darian can t sit idly by and he decides he is going to find the killer and deal with him … his way.
Couldn’t stop reading it. One of the freshest and most well-written novels I’ve come across this year. – Graeme Blundell, crime reviewer, The Australian
Never relinquishes its hold on your nerves – The Canberra Times
Compulsive reading, PROMISE itself is more menacing, more disturbing and much more confronting than any other crime thriller on the shelves. It is brutal. It is terrifying. It is a brilliant book. – Rob Monshull, Weekends Producer, ABC
The best thing about this book is that it looks like there will be a second one. – Australian Bookseller & Publisher
A startling new voice, a gritty Australian thriller, a book you won’t put down
