Overview

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 4pm, 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.

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Reviews

'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']

Derek writes:Tony Cavanaugh is a great new voice in Australian crime writing. I'm a self-confessed 'un-fan' of Australian crime writing. I prefer my antagonists to be sloshing through the snow in lower 6th Avenue, or pottering around the back streets of Prague. But Tony Cavanaugh has proved that there are Australian writers who can tell a compelling story set closer to home. Cavanaugh's protagonist, Darian Richards was the hottest star in the Victorian Homicide Squad. A copper with a perfect clear-up rate. But sixteen years and one case he couldn't crack has driven him out of the force and into early retirement in Noosa. His idyllic lifestyle is interrupted as a succession of young girls goes missing from the Sunshine Coast. All young, all blonde, all pretty. At first the police treat the disappearance as simple runaways, but Darian knows the signs, and even before the local police will admit it, he is certain there is a serial killer at work. So he begins an investigation that takes him outside the local police, and brings him into conflict with the local head of detectives, an old adversary he refers to as Fat Adam. After the sixth victim is taken, we readers are brought into the abductor's head, reading alternate scenes from his viewpoint and from that of Darian. At this point Winston, the abductor, the killer of children, boasts he is way in front of the police, and in the sense that he's way in front of the local knuckle-draggers, it's true. But Darian has resources the local cops don't have. One of those is Isosceles, a computer geek operating from high above Melbourne's CBD, who can hack almost anything. Darian has tasked Isosceles with finding the exact location where the girl's cell phones were turned off, and armed with this information makes an early breakthrough. But Winston is a cypher, a figure that despite owning the requisite white van that serial killers the world over seem to prefer, manages to hide in plain sight. He changes his modus operandi, and abducts his analyst, who he refers to as 'Helen Big Tits', to distinguish her from the pre-pubescent girls that are more to his taste. Darian uses superior intellect and Isosceles' technology and eventually his girlfriend as bait to trap Winston, but there are no happy endings in Noosa.Promise is a fast-paced, action packed filled thriller, set among the sand dunes and palm trees many of us know. In Darian Richards Tony Cavanaugh has created an intelligent, pragmatic hunter, and one I hope we see again very soon.

There is heaps of early interest in this one already! Reviews already guaranteed in Who, Woman's Day, New Idea, Madison and Grazia. ABC's First Tuesday Book Club have expressed interest in having Tony on the show to talk crime. Blanket review coverage across crime media, men's mags and all the major newspapers. Pitching Tony to all the festivals - watch this space!

Author Information

Tony Cavanaugh is a writer and producer of film and television, writing numerous dramas since the 1980s. He has over thirty years experience in the industry, in all fields, from the genesis of an idea to production. He has written and edited award winning shows, 'The Sullivans', 'Once Were Warriors', 'Fire', 'Medivac', 'The Day of Roses' and 'Through My Eyes'. He has lectured at several prestigious universities and institutions including RMIT, Melbourne University and the Australian Writer's Guild, and has been a regular guest on ABC morning radio with Jon Faine, commenting on the film and television industry. He was also invited to judge the Logie Awards, Australian Film Institute Awards and the International Emmy Awards, held in New York.

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