Book picks similar to
The Greater Good by Tim Ayliffe


australian-author
crime
australia
thriller

The Eighth Sister


Robert Dugoni - 2019
    Then his former bureau chief shows up at his house with a risky new assignment: travel undercover to Moscow and locate a Russian agent believed to be killing members of a clandestine US spy cell known as the seven sisters.Desperate for money, Jenkins agrees to the mission and heads to the Russian capital. But when he finds the mastermind agent behind the assassinations—the so-called eighth sister—she is not who or what he was led to believe. Then again, neither is anyone else in this deadly game of cat and mouse.Pursued by a dogged Russian intelligence officer, Jenkins executes a daring escape across the Black Sea, only to find himself abandoned by the agency he serves. With his family and freedom at risk, Jenkins is in the fight of his life—against his own country.

Cruelty's Daughter


Anna Willett - 2018
     Mina is struggling to come to terms with her past. Having led a reclusive life, shunning human contact, she decides to take on a local college course to help get her life back on track. However, when a young girl who tries to befriend her is abducted by a serial killer, Mina feels responsible. She refused to wait with the girl for her mother to pick her up. And she shrugged off the youngster’s fears. Now Mina cannot rest until she finds out what happened. But as she probes into the events of that evening, her own nightmares start to return. She has put herself in danger, one that leads to an increasingly tense standoff with a cruel and vicious man who will stop at nothing. Can she find the strength to stand up to her demons, past and present? And will she do so, even if it means risking everything?

The Fragments


Toni Jordan - 2019
    The woman quotes a phrase from the Karlson fragments that Caddie knows does not exist—and yet to Caddie, who knows Inga Karlson’s work like she knows her name, it feels genuine.Caddie is electrified. Jolted her from her sleepy, no-worries life in torpid 1980s Brisbane, she is driven to investigate: to find the clues that will unlock the greatest literary mystery of the twentieth century

Shelter


Catherine Jinks - 2021
    A perfect place to hide. That’s one of the reasons she offers to shelter Nerine, who’s escaping a violent ex. The other is that Meg knows what it’s like to live with an abusive partner.Nerine is jumpy and her two little girls are frightened. It tells Meg all she needs to know where they’ve come from, and she’s not all that surprised when Nerine asks her to get hold of a gun. But she knows it’s unnecessary. They’re safe now.Then she starts to wonder about some little things. A disturbed flyscreen. A tune playing on her windchimes. Has Nerine’s ex tracked them down? Has Meg’s husband turned up to torment her some more?By the time she finds out, it’ll be too late to do anything but run for her life.

Darkest Place


Jaye Ford - 2016
    Her dream is shattered when she is woken in the dead of night by a man standing next to her bed, silently watching her. Yet there is no way an intruder could have entered the apartment.With police doubting her story and her psychologist suggesting it's just a dream, Carly is on her own. But being alone isn't so appealing when you're scared to go to sleep....

Malicious Intent


Kathryn Fox - 2005
    Anya Crichton.The only female freelancer in the male-dominated field, pathologist Dr. Anya Crichton will take any work she can find to pay child support and her mortgage, get her new business off the ground, and battle her ex-husband for custody of their three-year-old son. Things turn around rapidly, however, when her expert forensic evidence is instrumental in winning a high-profile case -- and new work offers start pouring in.But Anya's investigation into the drug overdose of a young Lebanese girl is raising troubling questions. Startling coincidences between this sad and tragic death and a series of seemingly unrelated suicides that Anya is also examining at the urging of her friend and colleague, detective sergeant Kate Farrer, suggest that there's a monumental evil at work in the shadows. With each scalpel cut, Anya Crichton's forensic prowess and deductive brilliance are pulling her relentlessly toward a sinister plot and a devastating truth -- and once she enters the lethal darkness, she may never again see the light of day.

Death in the Ladies' Goddess Club


Julian Leatherdale - 2020
    It's not some bloody game.'In the murky world of Kings Cross in 1932, aspiring crime writer Joan Linderman and her friend and flatmate Bernice Becker live the wild bohemian life, a carnival of parties and fancy-dress artists' balls.One Saturday night, Joan is thrown headfirst into a real crime when she finds Ellie, her neighbour, murdered. To prove her worth as a crime writer and bring Ellie's killer to justice, Joan secretly investigates the case in the footsteps of Sergeant Lillian Armfield.But as Joan digs deeper, her list of suspects grows from the luxury apartment blocks of Sydney's rich to the brothels and nightclubs of the Cross's underclass.Death in the Ladies' Goddess Club is a riveting noir crime thriller with more surprises than even novelist Joan bargained for: blackmail, kidnapping, drug-peddling, a pagan sex cult, undercover cops, and a shocking confession.

Pieces of Her


Karin Slaughter - 2018
    . . ?Andrea knows everything about her mother, Laura. She knows she’s spent her whole life in the small beachside town of Belle Isle; she knows she’s never wanted anything more than to live a quiet life as a pillar of the community; she knows she’s never kept a secret in her life. Because we all know our mothers, don’t we?But all that changes when a trip to the mall explodes into violence and Andrea suddenly sees a completely different side to Laura. Because it turns out that before Laura was Laura, she was someone completely different. For nearly thirty years she’s been hiding from her previous identity, lying low in the hope that no one would ever find her. But now she’s been exposed, and nothing will ever be the same again.The police want answers and Laura’s innocence is on the line, but she won’t speak to anyone, including her own daughter. Andrea is on a desperate journey following the breadcrumb trail of her mother’s past. And if she can’t uncover the secrets hidden there, there may be no future for either one of them. . . .

Hello from the Gillespies


Monica McInerney - 2014
    This year, Angela surprises herself—she tells the truth....The Gillespies are far from the perfect family that Angela has made them out to be. Her husband is coping badly with retirement. Her thirty-two-year-old twins are having career meltdowns. Her third daughter, badly in debt, can’t stop crying. And her ten-year-old son spends more time talking to his imaginary friend than to real ones.Without Angela, the family would fall apart. But when a bump on the head leaves Angela with temporary amnesia, the Gillespies pull together—and pull themselves together—in wonderfully surprising ways....

The Rumour


Lesley Kara - 2018
    That's all it takes.She stabbed little Robbie Harris. To change a life -She's living under a new name.For ever.She's reformed. So they say . . . Joanna is going to regret the day she ever said a word.

The Ruin


Dervla McTiernan - 2018
    But he's never forgotten the two children she left behind...When Aisling Conroy's boyfriend Jack is found in the freezing black waters of the river Corrib, the police tell her it was suicide. A surgical resident, she throws herself into study and work, trying to forget - until Jack's sister Maude shows up. Maude suspects foul play, and she is determined to prove it.DI Cormac Reilly is the detective assigned with the re-investigation of an 'accidental' overdose twenty years ago - of Jack and Maude's drug- and alcohol-addled mother. Cormac is under increasing pressure to charge Maude for murder when his colleague Danny uncovers a piece of evidence that will change everything...This unsettling crime debut draws us deep into the dark heart of Ireland and asks who will protect you when the authorities can't - or won't. Perfect for fans of Tana French and Jane Casey.

Other People's Houses


Kelli Hawkins - 2021
    The perfect family. Too good to be true.Kate Webb still grieves for her young son, ten years after his loss. She spends her weekends hungover, attending open houses on Sydney's wealthy north shore and imagining the lives of the people who live there.Then Kate visits the Harding house - the perfect house with, it seems, the perfect family. A photograph captures a kind-looking man, a beautiful woman she once knew from university days, and a boy - a boy that for one heartbreaking moment she believes is her own son.When her curiosity turns to obsession, she uncovers the cracks that lie beneath a glossy facade of perfection, sordid truths she could never have imagined.But is it her imagination? As events start to spiral dangerously out of control, could the real threat come from Kate herself?

The Crossing


B. Michael Radburn - 2011
    Taylor is the only ranger in this isolated town adjoining a national park... a town dying a slow death as the rising waters of the new dam project slowly flood it.Struggling with the guilt of Claire's disappearance, Taylor is a chronic sleepwalker. When another young girl the same age goes missing, Taylor begins to question himself... uncertain of what happens when he sleepwalks.It's a race against time not just to find the missing girl, but in Taylor's search for redemption and a past better left lying at the bottom of the new lake.

Beautiful Malice


Rebecca James - 2010
    To erase her past, Katherine has moved to a new city, enrolled in a new school, and even changed her name. She’s done the next best thing to disappearing altogether. Now, wary and alone, she seeks nothing more than anonymity. What she finds instead is the last thing she expected: a friend.Even more unlikely, Katherine’s new friend is the most popular and magnetic girl in school. Extroverted, gorgeous, flirtatious, and unpredictable, she is everything that Katherine is not and doesn’t want to be: the center of attention. Yet Alice’s enthusiasm is infectious, her candor sometimes unsettling, and Katherine, in spite of her guarded caution, finds herself drawn into Alice’s private circle. But Alice has secrets, too—darker than anyone can begin to imagine. And when she lets her guard down at last, Katherine discovers the darkest of them all. For there will be no escaping the past for Katherine Patterson—only a descent into a trap far more sinister . . . and infinitely more seductive.

Drugs, Guns & Lies: My life as an undercover cop


Keith Banks - 2020
    This is what it's really like to be an undercover police officer.'Banks has told his story in a raw and honest autobiography. It is the best true crime book published in Australia in a decade.' - John Silvester, Crime Reporter for The Age Undercover was like guerrilla warfare; to understand your enemy, you had to walk amongst them, to become them. The trick was to keep an eye on that important line between who you were and who you were pretending to be.This is the true story of Keith Banks, one of Queensland's most decorated police officers, and his journey into the world of drugs as an undercover operative in the 1980s. In an era of corruption, often alone and with no backup, he and other undercover cops quickly learned to blend into the drug scene, smoking dope and drinking with targets, buying drugs and then having dealers arrested. Very quickly, the lines between his identity as a police officer and the life he pretended to be part of became blurred. This is a raw and confronting story of undercover cops who all became casualties of that era, some more than others, when not everyone with a badge could be trusted.