Legacy, by Chris Hammer

A bomb destroys the launch of crime journalist Martin Scarsden’s latest book, an expose of the Melbourne mafia. This sends his wife and son overseas for their safety, while he heads out west, off grid and incognito. But it turns out he is now too well known to go unrecognised, especially when he is drawn into a longstanding feud across the Queensland/New South Wales border involving, as ever, water. Meanwhile disgraced ghostwriter Ecco has been hired to write the history of one of the feuding families, discovering more than she expected about a historic mystery of missing explorers and a more recent disappearance of an apparently murderous family member. As usual with a Hammer tale there is a lot going on and it can get a bit confusing at the start, switching between three points of view. This is not helped by one strand - excerpts of the missing woman’s diaries – printed in great slabs of italics that are physically difficult to read. Note to publishers – just use a different font, not bloody italics! The three twisty strands are gradually brought together into a nice plait, although a few convenient coincidences are needed to get there and the timeline is a little fuzzy. Slight spoiler – there are no red herrings in this story; every suspect is guilty of something!