Carmine Delmonico

At Connecticut's most prestigious medical research institute, something is very wrong. It's the 1960s and America is in ferment, but at the Hug, the daily business of research continues, and the hierarchies of power remain undisturbed. That is, until the body of a woman is found in one of the animal research laboratories one morning - and then another.

The new crime novel that will have you up all night from Australia's best-loved storyteller. It's a beautiful spring day in the little city of Holloman, Connecticut; the year is 1967, and the world teeters on the brink of nuclear holocaust as the Cold War goes relentlessly on.

The year is 1967 and the world teeters on the brink of nuclear holocaust as the Cold War goes relentlessly on. On a beautiful spring day in the little city of Holloman, Connecticut, chief of detectives Carmine Delmonico walks into the prestigious Chubb University halls to be greeted by a limp corpse clamped in a bear trap, all traces of life drained from it. And this is just the beginning.

America in 1968 is in turmoil and the leafy Holloman suburb of Carew is being silently terrorised by a series of vicious and systematic rapes. When finally one victim finds the courage to speak out and go to the police, the rapist escalates to murder. For Captain Carmine Delmonico, it seems to be a case with no clues. And it comes as the Holloman Police Department is troubled: A lieutenant is out of his depth, a sergeant is out of control, and into this mix comes the beautiful, ruthlessly ambitious new trainee, Helen MacIntosh, daughter of the influential president of Chubb University.

Jim and Millie Hunter have it all: good looks, brilliant minds, and a meteoric rise to fame. Dr Jim Hunter is a genius biochemist, and author of a smash-hit science book that is propelling him to the top. His wife Millie, is a blonde bombshell and fellow scientist, researching rare poisons derived from puffer fish. They seem to have it all, but others in their academic circle have got the knives out, jealous of their success - and their inter-racial relationship arouses prejudice.