Now that's how I like them written. An unsolved mystery, varied characters and solid policing to get to the bottom of it all.

After absolutely loving Darcy's first novel, The Fall Between, I was excited to see this follow up come out. There is no second book hangover here.

When a skull is discovered by an errant dog on Mt Wingen, the police soon turn their investigation towards a missing persons case almost twenty years old. Could this skull belong to Oliver Lavine?

DI Rebecca Giles along with her team are tasked with re-interviewing the four youths that were with Oliver that day at Burning Mountain and seeing if they can glean anything further out of them. I visualised these interactions like a scene from the TV show Cold Case. As the past is dragged to the present we see all their old insecurities, bravado, regrets and dreams resurface.

I loved the interspersing of other investigations into the story and wondering what link they may have and whether they will help or hinder the investigation into the skull and who it may belong to. The array of characters from cocky wannabes like Paul Cooper, dreamers like Bell Marrone, Bob Bradbury who tries so hard but just can't quite make things work, to no hoper thugs like Trent Thicket and creepy predators like Bernard Nestor gave this story amazing depth.

While this book can certainly be read without reading The Fall Between first, I loved seeing the continuing story of Rebecca and her relationship with her father, retired Detective Benjamin Giles. The girl needs a holiday though.

Fabulous follow up book, when's the next one?

Darcy Tindale was shortlisted for her debut novel The Fall Between, a book which introduced readers to detective Rebecca Giles. In that first book, Giles had relocated from Sydney to Muswellbrook, in the upper Hunter Valley, to look after her ageing father, also a former policeman but also uncover some family secrets. The sequel, Burning Mountain, finds Giles involved in a cold case which reaches back into her childhood.
Giles is on leave when a skull is found on Mount Wingen, before long it is suspected that the skull (and nearby remains) belong to Oliver Lavine, a teenager who went missing eighteen years before while on a hike in the area with four friends. The Lavine case was one of her father’s cases and he had always suspected their neighbour, a horse-riding teacher who was also suspected of being a paedophile but could not find the evidence. Oliver’s four companions from that day are still in town and at least two of them are planning a little more criminal activity of their own. While in another story thread, local Amy Thicket and her ten-year-old son Joe are trying to manage with Amy’s violent, abusive husband. All of these stories will collide as the investigation proceeds.
Rebecca Giles once again is a fairly messy but believable and effective investigator. Her relationship with her father is well observed and again the investigation allows her to see her own past in a new light. But as with The Fall Between, Tindale is interested in a broader range of characters, and Burning Mountain has a number of interesting, if extremely flawed, side characters.
Australian cold case crime stories about missing teenage bushwalkers have become a little common place recently. This premise allows for an exploration of the toxic nature of teenage friendships and the impact of long held secrets coming to light. Just this year we have had Christian White’s The Ledge and Bronwyn Rivers’ The Reunion which both use a similar premise. While these books share some DNA with Burning Mountain, all three take different approaches to dealing with their subject matter. Tindale’s is a more down-the line procedural but she also layers on a couple of additional present day subplots, one of Tarantino-esque half-baked criminals (who also happen to be suspects in the original crime) and the other of domestic violence.
Burning Mountain is a great follow up to Tindale’s debut. She uses the landscape well (Burning Mountain is a real place in the Hunter Valley where an underground cola seam has been burning for thousands of years) and ranges over a diverse cast of local characters. What also stands out here is the number of threads that Tindale sets up and then brings together for a tense finale which, once dealt with, allows for one final twist.

In this second instalment of Darcy Tindale’s Detective Giles series two cold cases feature - one a missing person’s case, the other that of an alleged pedophile.. The book follows the key players of these cases, all who seem to be living disappointed, thwarted lives. There’s a sense that Detective Rebecca Giles, living once again in her home town of Musselbrook to be close to her ailing father, is treading water in her life too. The discovery of a skull reactivates these investigations and sets a chain of events in motion that lead to a tragedy and the solving of the cases. Darcy Tindale is interested in the relationships between parents and children, in love, self interest and sacrifice and the resolution of the threads of the story lines causes her readers to reflect on this. I liked Detective Giles as a character - she is flawed, self contained, a thinker.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the advance review copy.

Five went up, only four came down
In 2006, fifteen year old Oliver went hiking with friends and vanished without a trace. Almost twenty years later, Detective Rebecca Giles is called to bushland as a skull has been found. Detective Giles needs to find the friends that were there that day, as she is convinced they know more than they told police back then. But when she discusses the case with her Superintendent, another suspect is thrown into the mix, one much closer to home.

I really enjoyed this rural setting, not too far from where I lived at one time in my life and the characters, all with secrets. There was a lot going on in this one, particularly once I reached the midpoint and it was so clever the way the author unfolded the various threads in this one. Another thoroughly enjoyable novel.