It was Reading Matter’s post about Lisa Ellery’s second book, Hot Ground, that took me to her first book. This was a fast-paced murder mystery set in Perth. The central character is Andrew, a young attorney who works in the prosecutor’s office, called the DPP in Australia. He works closely with police, but despite that, when the murder of Lily, a young woman, is discovered, he was briefly a suspect. They had met at a bar, he spent the night with her, and wrote his phone number on a note when he left in the morning. It was only when the police determined she had been killed at a time the next day when his location elsewhere was known that he was no longer a suspect.
He becomes convinced her brother-in-law, a prominent barrister, killed her based on hearing her side of a phone conversation. No surprise, he was right, but he had a monumental task persuading others. He had previously made the start of a romantic connection with Jessy, one of the two policemen investigating Lily’s murder. In the course of his effort to find the murderer, he is beaten nearly to death, becomes addicted to pain meds, and is framed for having child porn. I get the concept of having your character beat the odds, but this went a little too far. The solution involved knowing how someone could use computer technology to get into his computer that was detailed using terms not familiar to me. I was not sure whether the terms were unfamiliar because they were Australian or just technology I don’t know. Despite my reservations about the problems overwhelming the main character and the complex computer business, I found the book to be satisfying.
Her other book remains of interest to me. In that one Jessy has moved from Perth to the goldfields of Kalgoorlie-Boulder. She sounds like a worthy protagonist. At this point that book is not available as a audiobook.
Lisa Ellery, Private Prosecution, Freemantle Press, 2021, 248 pages (I listened to the audiobook). Not available in the public library.