The Summertime Dead

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.