This one comes hot on the heels of Bailey’s first novel, The Dark Lake. Detective Sergeant Gemma Woodstock has ditched her complicated life in the country for an equally complicated life in Melbourne. She has left her young son with his father and feels the guilt and sadness of it every day: yet another part of her knows she somehow needs to be a homicide detective, even when she is isolated in her new work environment. She is still lost and unhappy but good at her job, as she needs to be when two people are killed by the same knife. One is a homeless man and the other a prominent actor who is knifed in the middle of filming a scene in a zombie movie. If there’s a more complicated and ridiculous way to kill someone, I’ve not heard of it. It’s a silly premise in an otherwise solid novel and the explanation for it doesn’t quite ring true, but the book is quite a good read. It’s a like, not a love.
