By Peter C Byrnes
Book Synopsis
This is the 41st story in the Series of Novellas concerning the life and career of Murder Squad Detective Joseph Lind.
His long-term partner of several years, Shelley Anne Shield has suffered an accident that puts her out of action for some time. Upon her return to work she again aggravates the recent injury which casts doubt over her ever returning to the Murder Squad.
Lind is partnered with the young, bright eyed and bushy tailed raw recruit Sasha Blayney who had worked previously with both Lind and Shields.
Death is part of living and violent death an acceptance in modern day civilisations. This does not make it right and Police Forces around the World are partly there due to its insidious nature.
A fire deliberately lit, razes a busy but small General Store in a Shopping strip in a suburb in inner Sydney. An elderly woman’s body is found in the charred remains of the establishment. The Shop’s senior Owner barely makes it out of the inferno alive albeit badly burnt.
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A week after the fire, the chap succumbs to his burns over much of his body.
The Insurance Company suspects insurance fraud. A copy-cat episode of a similar elk of some years previously in a neighbouring suburb.
Murder Squad Detectives Lind and Blayney are called in because of the charred remains of the elderly customer of the Store requires their involvement. A Report prepared for the Coroner seems to be all that is required.
Not all is as it seems and with the help of the Senior Fire Officer Doug Saunders, the arson becomes one of suspicious circumstances as the investigation proceeds.
Concurrently, in a small hamlet south of Sydney where a successful General Practitioners’ business looks after the needs of the small community, the ghastly murder of one of the Doctors has Lind and Blayney delving into a history of sexual and emotional intrigue in the Practise proving perhaps that violent death is not a curable disease.
