Finding the Bones by Natalie Conyer

Destroy your beliefs or destroy your family? How could anyone decide something like that? And yet there was no choice.

Sydney, 1980s: Belle Fitzgerald, young, rich and spirited, lives in Kings Cross, the city's bohemian heart. When she learns of plans to demolish her street and evict its residents, she commits to fighting the development, even though this brings her up against the Cross's crime lords and their servants, the notoriously corrupt local cops. Recklessly, dangerously, against her better judgment, she embarks on a passionate affair with one of those cops, Sergeant Stanton Rose.

Then Belle goes missing. Her disappearance becomes one of the nation's great mysteries.

Sydney, today: Stanton Rose, retired, is an Australian icon, celebrated for his undercover work in the Cross. Jackie Rose, his daughter, has followed in his footsteps. She's a homicide detective, uncompromising and ambitious.

When Belle Fitzgerald's bones are discovered, Jackie is given the very cold and very public case. This will be her moment to shine. But what she uncovers threatens to turn her life -and the lives of those closest to her - upside down.

As her investigation deepens, Jackie has to decide how far she will go to navigate the fine line between love and betrayal, loyalty and corruption.

'With its appealing main character and convincing police work, Finding the Bones is a compelling crime novel about inner Sydney, corruption, compromise and the persistence of the past.' - Garry Disher