The Bluffs : A Novel (2020)

 
 
 
 
At the bottom of the world, there is an island.
It is a land of rugged wilderness, of ice and snow and blistering heat, of the oldest trees on earth . . .
They say tigers still roam there.
They say other things roam, too.
When a school group of teenage girls goes missing in the remote wilderness of Tasmania’s Great Western Tiers, the people of Limestone Creek are immediately on alert.
Three decades ago, five young girls disappeared in the area of those dangerous bluffs, and the legend of ‘the Hungry Man’ still haunts locals to this day.
Now, authorities can determine that the teacher, Eliza Ellis, was knocked unconscious, so someone on the mountain was up to foul play.
Jordan Murphy, the local dealer and father of missing student Jasmine, instantly becomes the prime suspect.
But Detective Con Badenhorst knows that in a town this size – with corrupt cops, small-town politics, and a teenage YouTube sensation – everyone is hiding something, and bluffing is second nature.
When a body is found, mauled, at the bottom of a cliff, suspicion turns to a wild animal – but that can’t explain why she was discovered barefoot, her shoes at the top of the cliff, laces neatly tied.