Winner of the Ned Kelly Award for Crime Fiction (Australia) Joe Cashin was different once. He moved easily then. He was surer and less thoughtful. But there are consequences when you’ve come so close to dying. For Cashin, they included a posting away from the world of Homicide to the quiet place on the coast where he grew up. Now all he has to do is play the country cop and walk the dogs. And sometimes think about how he was before. Then prominent local Charles Bourgoyne is beaten and left for dead. Everything seems to point to three boys from the nearby Aboriginal community; everyone seems to want it to. But Cashin is unconvinced. And as tragedy unfolds relentlessly into tragedy, he finds himself holding onto something that might be better let go.

In 1936 San Francisco, eighteen-year-old Willa MacCarthy is bound for the convent. But when she discovers her love of medicine, she will defy her family and work with a female doctor to care for those building the Golden Gate Bridge.

Inspector Stephen Villani, head of homicide in Melbourne, Australia, has a full agenda: a murdered woman in a penthouse apartment, three men butchered in a sadistic rampage, a tattoofaced drug dealer corrupting his rebellious daughter, a crumbling marriage. As these seemingly unrelated events begin to unfold, Villani finds himself immersed in an unfamiliar world of political scandal and ethical ambiguity. He must navigate the inept bureaucracy that is the police department, all the while maintaining a solid front and trying to keep the press, his family, and his own past from breaking him completely. With each twist and every turn of this taut crime novel, Villani is forced to question whom he can trust. While The Broken Shore captured the harshness and beauty of regional Australia, Truth captures the grim reality of the city and the people who struggle to hold on to any certainty that they can find. Tense and unrelenting, this unforgettable novel confronts the complexity of human relationships and the difficulty of escaping the past.

Have you ever wanted to just leave everything and disappear?