Finding the Bones (Natalie Conyer, Echo)

Finding the Bones by Ned Kelly Award–winning author Natalie Conyer is a gritty, slow-burn Australian crime thriller that exposes the fine line between belief and obsession – and the lengths some people will go to hold on. While the story sits within the same world as Conyer’s Present Tense and Shadow City, it shifts focus to acting inspector Jackie Rose and can be read comfortably on its own. Alternating between the present day and the infamous underbelly of Sydney’s Kings Cross in the 1980s, this neatly plotted page-turner pits Jackie against her decorated father, former detective Stanton Rose. When the bones of Belle Fitzgerald are discovered nearly 40 years after Stanton began an illicit affair with her and she disappeared, Jackie scrambles to solve the cold case before everything she has ever believed is destroyed and the killer escapes justice. Although Finding the Bones works as a standalone, readers familiar with Conyer’s earlier books will pick up additional layers of context around character, place and plot. Some elements – particularly those referencing historical moments, such as the disappearance of Juanita Nielsen, the history of Kings Cross or police corruption and organised crime in the 1970s and 1980s – are sketched lightly, rewarding those who arrive with existing knowledge. Still, the novel remains a compelling read that draws readers into a world of murky morality and delivers a cleverly devised set of suspects. For fans of Natalie Conyer’s other novels, Dervla McTiernan’s The Ruin and Sarah Bailey’s The Dark Lake.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Kate Frawley is a former bookseller and a librarian in training. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

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