Kill Your Boss
by Jack Heath
Allen & Unwin
Jack Heath is the award-winning author who wrote his first novel in high school and sold it to a publisher at age 18. In 2018 his first crime novel for adults, Hangman, was a smash-hit in Australia and has since been translated into French, German, Russian and Serbian.
His 2021 best-selling book, Kill Your Brother, was shortlisted for best crime novel at the Ned Kelly Awards, and the whodunnit Kill Your Boss is the follow-up to the darkly funny Kill Your Husbands.
Detective Sergeant Kiara Lui knows most of the people in Warrigal. She knows the two blokes who were having a loud argument in front of the Warrigal Public Library, and she knew she had to intervene before it became too physical.
Kiara hadn’t visited the library since the invention of 4G, even though the library card was taking up space in her wallet. So she didn’t know the head of the library, Neville Adams, who fell from the top of the building, slamming head-first into the steel bike rack right in front of her … dead.
The suicide rate in Warrigal is 60% higher than in Sydney, and they are typically single men between the ages of thirty and fifty. But would you choose a drop of 4 to 6 metres, and wouldn’t you finish your last cigarette?
Although she had just returned from her honeymoon with new wife Elise, Kiara was straight into detective mode as she closed the library to leave all the suspects inside. Interviews are conducted, and it turns out that Neville Adams was universally hated by staff, borrowers, and anybody who had ever met him.
As the days count down, past events are revealed, and it seems that everyone in the small town has something to hide. The race is on to catch the killer before there are more dead bodies in the library.
Lezly Herbert
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