Whispering Death

The sixth book in Garry Disher’s Peninsula murder mystery series.

Hal Challis is in trouble at home and abroad: carpeted by the boss for speaking out about police budget cuts; missing his lover, Ellen Destry, who is overseas on a study tour.

But there’s plenty to keep his mind off his problems. A rapist in a police uniform stalks Challis’s Peninsula beat, there is a serial armed robber headed in his direction and a home invasion that’s a little too close to home. Not to mention a very clever, very mysterious female cat burglar who may or may not be planning something on Challis’s patch.

Meanwhile, at the Waterloo Police Station, Challis finds his offsiders have their own issues. Scobie Sutton, still struggling with his wife’s depression, seems to be headed for a career crisis; and something very interesting is going on between Constable Pam Murphy and Jeanne Schiff, the feisty young sergeant on secondment from the Sex Crimes Unit.

In his sixth Peninsula murder mystery, Garry Disher keeps the tension and intrigue ramped up exquisitely on multiple fronts, while he takes his regular characters in compelling new directions. Disher is a grand master of the police procedural, operating at the peak of his craft.

Praise for Whispering Death:

‘An absolutely brilliant bloke to talk to, this interview ranges across how Garry researches his work, what drew him to writing, and touches on the idea that we are losing our story telling abilities.’ Listen to the interview here.

Stuart Beaton

‘Award-winning Disher is so prolific and popular that a review seems almost superfluous—a mere announcement of a release will have fans buying!’

Courier Mail

‘This very fine novel submits to the thriller conventions but with an easy freedom that makes it seem as if Disher made the rules himself….a compulsive and unsettling novel that should win Disher many new readers.’

Sunday Age

‘Disher works like a biographer, calmly attempting to assemble order in his characters’ chaotic lives. Disher cares about their interlinked worlds as much as he does about labyrinthe plots, fetished violence and the showy brainwork of his coppers. As always this grand master propels us methodically yet elegiacally. But he doesn’t just provide classy entertainment. His fiction is a kind of social barometer of prevailing tensions in the community, especially in the outlying badlands of Australia’s provincial coastal towns.’

Weekend Australian

‘Top class crime writing from the old school.’

South Coast Register

‘Garry Disher’s Whispering Death, the sixth in his Inspector Hal Challis Victorian regional procedural series, shows a grand master at work.’

Graeme Blundell, Weekend Australian