Iron Rose

The book opens with armed officers arriving to kill the narrator at a roadside beside dark paddocks, a moment that marks the end of the life he had built since. Mac Faraday now works as a blacksmith in a country town, where he drinks at the local pub and plays for the football team. He keeps his past at a distance, and he knows better than most that appearances can mislead.

When his closest friend, Ned Lowey, is found hanged, Mac doubts that Ned took his own life. Ned had kept newspaper clippings about a girl's skeleton discovered in an abandoned mine shaft. He had also been seen near Kinross Hall, a detention facility for young girls in trouble. Mac then has to account for a badly beaten girl found naked by a deserted road. Each question leads him further into the past.

As Mac digs deeper, the life he tried to leave behind returns with real menace. To learn why Ned died, and to keep himself alive, he must draw on skills he had long set aside. Peter Temple is an Australian crime writer, and this standalone novel is set in a rural Australian community.