Stone Town by Margaret Hickey

Publisher's Synopsis

With its gold-rush history long in the past, Stone Town has seen better days. And it’s now in the headlines for all the wrong reasons . . .

When three teenagers stumble upon a body in dense bushland one rainy Friday night, Senior Sergeant Mark Ariti’s hopes for a quiet posting in his old home town are shattered. The victim is Aidan Sleeth, a property developer, whose controversial plan to buy up local land means few are surprised he ended up dead.

However, his gruesome murder is overshadowed by a mystery consuming the entire nation: the disappearance of Detective Sergeant Natalie Whitsed.

Natalie had been investigating the celebrity wife of crime boss Tony ‘The Hook’ Scopelliti when she vanished. What did she uncover? Has it cost her her life? And why are the two Homicide detectives, sent from the city to run the Sleeth case, so obsessed with Natalie’s fate?

Following a late-night call from his former boss, Mark is sure of one thing: he’s now in the middle of a deadly game . . .

My Review of Stone Town

Set in rural South Australia, Stone Town is the 2nd book to feature Detective Sergeant Mark Ariti, the cop who handled the case chronicled in Cutter’s End so adeptly. He’s back and the slow paced quiet life he enjoys in the (fictional) town of Booralama is about to become uncomfortably busy.

A local real estate developer has been found in bushland just outside the tiny town of Stone Town. He was shot in the back of the head and a trio of local kids had stumbled across the body. This requires a call to Adelaide to get the homicide detectives to come out to run the murder investigation.

But the whole state is abuzz due to the disappearance of Detective Sergeant Natalie Whitsted who was in the process of investigating the wife of organised crime boss Tony Scopelliti. The fact that this case is constantly referred to, by Ariti, the homicide cops, the radio news reports, tends to suggest that it’s somehow going to play a part way out in the boondocks and Mark Ariti is going to be involved.

And the first connection is pretty soon upon us when Mark receives a call from the Deputy Commissioner to let him know that one of the homicide cops sent to Booralama is suspected of passing on information to Scopelliti. Mark is asked to keep his eyes and ears open and report back any pertinent details. The last thing Ariti wants to be is a snitch.

But snitching aside, it’s all eyes on Booralama with a suspicious character cruising around town, apparently watching what Ariti is doing, someone is being held captive in an old disused mine outside of town and the local show is gearing up which is keeping the local women busy, busy, busy.

This is a very familiar small town crime case where a string of wildly discordant facts are gathered together, seemingly unrelated to each other, only to become more significant as the case is worked. The power of proper police work is a strength of Ariti’s and he demonstrates that he’s a highly capable police officer, even when faced by outside threats from organised crime figures.

Although it first appears that we’re getting ourselves involved in a murder case, not a simple murder case, but a murder case just the same, it becomes increasingly apparent that there’s a lot more going on in and around the town of Stone Town. The missing police officer, the involvement of the Scopelliti family and a dirty cop passing on information all combine to make this a far more complicated case.

Like many Australian rural crime novels, the harsh and, at times, desolate landscape plays a critical role in setting the atmosphere. It heightens the sense of danger that Ariti feels whenever he heads into the bush and you can actually feel the hackles rise with the sense that someone is out there watching.

With a couple of unexpected twists thrown in at the back end, Stone Town marks a solid follow-up to Cutter’s End and provides confirmation that the DS Mark Ariti series is one that’s well worth following.