Lugarno

Drug-dealing and corruption are at the center of Cliff Hardy's 24th case

I was about to punch in the number when a man loomed up beside me. When I say loomed I mean loomed—he was tall and wide with a shaven head, and the pale hand that plucked the mobile from my grasp and threw it away was super-sized. "Hey," I protested. He just stood there, a pace away now—a hundred kilos of bone and muscle in T-shirt and jeans. I had a gun and a tyre iron and I thought I'd need both to make an impression on him, but they were in the car. For now, it was just me.

When it's only 24 hours into a new case and PI Cliff Hardy's already been heavied, you know that the job is going to get his full attention. Cliff has been hired by high-flying consultant Martin Price to find out who's been supplying heroin to Price's teenage daughter—who in turn has got her beautiful young stepmother hooked. The wealthy suburb of Lugarno seems an unlikely hotbed of drug-dealing and corruption, but Cliff is finding out the hard way that crime and violence come calling even at posh waterside addresses.

Peter Corris is best known as the godfather of Australian crime fiction and the author of Cliff Hardy detective stories. He is also the author ofA Round of Golf: 18 Holes with Peter Corris and the coauthor of Fred Hollows: An Autobiography.