Laura and Andrew live in Swinbrook, England with their 14-year-old daughter, Tilly. Laura’s parents Eliza and Bruce live in Brisbane, which Laura left in her 20s.
Visits were exchanged over the years but there has been little contact as of late, after Laura rang her mother suggesting they come for Christmas and her mother hung up the phone.
Two police officers arrive at their door with the news Eliza and Bruce have been found dead at a remote Queensland campsite called Hell Hole Gorge. There are no suspicious circumstances they are told. Her father, we discover later, died of a heart attack and her mother drowned having apparently fallen down an escarpment into water. A camera has been found.
These circumstances are decidedly odd to Laura. Her parents were not outback types, the desert and camping was not something they did. Why were they there and did they really die of natural causes?
Detective Sandretti explains her parents left Brisbane in a hurry and took few provisions.
She and Andrew decide to go to Brisbane for a year to do-up Eliza and Bruce’s house and sell it but when they arrive the house has a strange air about it.
The house appears to be haunted by Eliza and Bruce and a shadowy figure is sometimes seen outside.
The tension builds creating a fear that something dreadful will happen soon.
The book is a success as a thriller, pulling the reader along with Laura as she fights to solve the mystery of her parents’ abrupt departure and strange destination.
Reviewed by Anne Steven
