Kyle Perry — The Bluffs

Michael Joseph 2020 Paperback, 420pp. At the bottom of the world, there is an island. It is a land of rugged wilderness, of ice and snow and blistering heat . They say extinct tigers still roam there. They say other things roam, too. When a school group of teenage girls go missing in the remote wilderness of Tasmania's Great Western Tiers, the people of Limestone Creek are immediately on alert. Not long ago, six young girls went missing in the area of those dangerous bluffs, and the legends of 'the Hungry Man' still haunt 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, father of missing student Jasmine and the town's local dealer, instantly becomes prime suspect, but Detective Con Badenhorst knows that in a town this size - with corrupt cops, small-town politics, and a teenage YouTube sensation - anyone could be hiding something, and bluffing comes 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, like all victims past and present, was discovered barefoot, with her shoes found nearby, laces neatly tied. What happened up there on the bluffs? Somebody knows. unless the local legends are true. (ISBN: 9781760895679). Good.