Murder on North Terrace, by Lainie Anderson

It is September 1917 and a member of the Board of Governors has been found murdered in the art gallery on Adelaide’s North Terrace. This sequel to The Death of Dora Black sees Woman Police Constable Kate Cocks’s offsider Ethel Bromley seconded to use her society contacts to help investigate the murder. Left overstretched and under resourced, Miss Cox struggles to keep the women and children of Adelaide safe, with the added worry of a rapist leaving a young girl for dead in the parklands. In the wearying fourth year of the war there are both demobbed and newly recruited soldiers to deal with as well. Lainie Anderson’s chops as an historian provides a fascinating window into Adelaide in the 1910s alongside a cracking mystery with engaging, if flawed, heroines.