Peter Clancy

T. W. Lawless

In 1987, hard-drinking Melbourne journalist Peter Clancy returns to the outback Queensland town of Clarke’s Flat to settle his mother’s estate—only to find his brief visit becoming entangled in the town’s buried secrets. When his childhood friend, now a local police constable, asks for help investigating two deaths long dismissed as suicides, Peter is drawn into a dangerous search for the truth alongside an Aboriginal former stockman. As the investigation exposes the town’s entrenched power, prejudice, and violence, it also forces Peter to confront the shame of his own past. This atmospheric literary mystery explores guilt, injustice, loyalty, and the difficult possibility of redemption against the harsh landscape of rural Australia.