Mitchell Mystery Series by Robert Engwerda
Mitchell Mystery #1
The Summertime Dead
Robert Engwerda
When a teenage girl and boy go missing from the small town of Mitchell most put it down to them running away. But when their bodies are found brutally murdered a fortnight later the town’s attention quickly turns to its itinerant, summertime population, and to the dead girl’s boyfriend, Lee Furnell.
It’s 1966 and times are changing, even in country Victoria. Bob Dylan is on the radio, Elvis Presley on the television. But change doesn’t sit comfortably with everyone in Mitchell and the arrival and brash methods of the American-born Detective Gene Fielder from the Melbourne Homicide Squad raises temperatures inside and outside the local police station.
Mitchell’s Senior Sergeant Lloyd Cole sees no obvious suspect at first. Not so Fielder and his two offsiders whose attention quickly fastens on Furnell. Their suspect is threatened and beaten up in trying to force a confession out of him as tensions escalate between Cole and Fielder.
But when Cole has precious few leads to go on, how will he stop Fielder when the detective is determined to let nothing stand in the way of his arrest of Furnell? And when tragedy strikes the town again Cole is even more determined to find the killer and prove Fielder wrong. But how does the spate of home burglaries and thefts in town and the earlier disappearance of another girl fit in with Cole’s investigations? And what dark secrets is Fielder hiding from everyone?
As he negotiates the delicate ground among the town’s hurt and aggrieved, Cole knows only he can untangle Mitchell’s murky secrets and run Furnell’s killer to ground. And that the threats to him lurk near and far from home.
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Mitchell Mystery #2
Mitchell Mystery #3
Guy Fawkes Night
Robert Engwerda
It’s 1968 in the sleepy country town of Mitchell. Anton Dragic’s body is found in the smoking ruins of the Sandpiper reception centre where the local football club had just held its end of year celebrations.
As Senior Sergeant Lloyd Cole and Senior Constable Christine Sheridan probe the suspicious death they uncover disturbing evidence about the murdered man’s dark practices as the number of suspects mount.
There’s the Sandpiper’s owners, Mark and Gary Weaver, the corrupt shire councillors, the fruit shop owner Henderson, the backers of the Early Settlers housing estate, local farmer Tito Cavallo and marijuana-growing orchardists, among others.
Then there’s the dead man’s own murky past in wartime Yugoslavia.
The investigation comes to a head on Guy Fawkes Night as several more fires erupt, including one that takes the life of a suspect in Dragic’s death.
As Cole and Sheridan untangle the mystery even they aren’t prepared for what is finally revealed.
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