By Peter C Byrnes
Book Synopsis
This is the 43rd Novella in the series detailing the life and career of Detective Joseph Lind. It is the 23rd story where Detective Shelley Anne Shields is partnered with Joe.
Detective Lind can’t wait until the end of Winter for his ‘booked’ extended Holidays to more warmer parts in northern Queensland to begin. This sojourn ordered by DS Clive Butler as Lind is ‘on the brink’ after the trio of gruesome ‘Kiddie Homicides’ tests his very mettle. His and other members of the First Respondent Group.
He does not want to be involved in multiple Homicide Cases so close to his intended date of Leave. He hopes that he can leave his partner with a clean plate before he begins his Holidays.
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The Holiday “Coastal Strip” from Tweed Heads on the far north coast border of NSW through to the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, is Australia’s holiday “Capital.”
This Holiday Mecca also draws a large demand for soft and hard drugs, the entire business controlled by three or four competing Bikie Gangs. They constantly challenging one another for a bigger share of the ‘pie’ and the warring factions are often at loggerheads that involve ‘drive-by’ shootings, damage to property, torching of Properties and Clubhouses and even death of members and family.
Into this cauldron comes a new-comer. A third tier Criminal Family from the western suburbs of Sydney. This triggers a vendetta that spans several years and the death of many of the participants, or so it seems to both the Queensland and NSW Police Forces who some will accuse, will sit back and wait until the Gangs kill each other of!
A vehicular explosion kills the elderly mother and only teen-age son of this low-grade Crime Family, leaving the daughter of the woman and the mother of the lad slain to conduct her own vicious revenge acts on the supposed perpetrators of the crime.
Detectives Lind and Shields are involved in a fatal vehicle accident. The two only shaken but kept in Hospital overnight as a precaution.
The death of two young lads and the dumping of their battered bodies has them scratching their heads, wondering what the connection is or if there is a connection between all parties and acts of violence involved. The death toll mounts slowly over the years, reinforcing the notion that death is for keeps and the warring parties only stopping when forced by premature deaths that leads to the extinction of one of the Bikie gangs on the Gold Coast.
