Murder in the Mudflats

Councillor Maggie Ashburn never expects her partner will become the chief suspect in a murder enquiry. But that’s exactly what happens to Mark Ashburn when he stumbles across a lifeless body in the mudflats of Queens Bay… 

Maggie, realising Mark’s DNA will be plastered all over the body, promptly sticks her nose into police business to try to clear his name. 

However, conducting a personal murder enquiry while leading opposition to her shire president’s plans to build artificial islands in Queens Bay, while simultaneously trying to complete local projects, soon lands Maggie in serious trouble, 

A threatening note pushed under her door tells her to ‘back off’ or evidence further implicating Mark in the murder will be planted in the mudflats. However Maggie, accustomed as she is to receiving threats from disgruntled constituents, pushes boldly on, not knowing which of her projects she is supposed to curtail.

Queens Bay detective constable, Keith Corvallis, certainly does not welcome Maggie’s intrusions into his murder investigation. He’s had dealings with her before and knows that, despite her sometimes canny insights, she is also a right pain in the derrière.

In an uneasy truce, and bumping into each other at every turn, Maggie and Corvallis identify all of the potential witnesses to the crime, bar one. So when Maggie travels to Sydney and spots Corvallis and his NSW detective mate, Louie Gardner looking for the missing witness, she jumps on board and joins them in what initially becomes a fruitless chase. 

Continuously crossing paths, Corvallis, Gardner, Maggie and Mark are drawn into a series of chilling encounters from Queens Bay to Sydney and back again. In their travels, they  tail an ex-KGB operative, pursue a sinister yacht, witness a kidnap, expose Australian wildlife smugglers, out politicians on the take, uncover a scam at the shire and bust a child prostitution racket, before solving not one, but two, murders.