Fathers of Hindley Street

This is a novel also written in my favourite historical crime/mystery genre and is based on a true event that happened to my great-great-grandfather James, in Adelaide Australia in 1892. The book cover is a photo of Hindley Street, where he lived, taken in 1892. Perhaps James is even in the photo?

The body of Duncan McNabb, ill and down on his luck is found dead in a boarding house on Hindley Street. He has been shot through the head. The two men, James and Sean who shared the room with him claim to know nothing about it, but their stories just don't add up.

An inquest is held, and despite the Coroner noting that robbery would have been a strong motive for murder and that it would have been very difficult for the right-handed man to have shot himself in the left side of his head, a verdict of suicide is called.

Twenty years later, in 1912, a journalist meets Duncan's daughter Marjorie, and together they start an investigation into what really happened in that boarding house room that Sunday afternoon in May.

Marjorie and George find James' daughter, Jane, and she reluctantly joins their quest, if only to prove that her father, despite his drunken violent past, was not a murderer.

The trio locate and talk to the people who were involved, and find themselves in great danger as they ultimately uncover a murderer who will stop at nothing to leave the past dead and buried.

This is a novel about discovery. Two daughters: one who didn't know and cannot remember, and one who knew and wishes to forget finally discover and understand the men their fathers were, what shaped their lives and the legacy they left behind.