Brick Brown has problems: she hates her day job, and her beloved Uncle Baz has gone missing. Although a bartender by trade, Brick Brown has finagled herself a job on the city council to investigate a complaint that threatens to close her uncle's well-loved blues club in the heart of Melbourne. Brick suspects something strange is going on, but when her amateur sleuthing uncovers the mayor's dead body in a locked room, she's dragged into the dangerous world of dodgy developers with the reluctant help of Mitch Mitchell, a prickly war correspondent turned investigative journalist. Relying on her street smarts and an unlikely band of allies, Brick and Mitchell unearth corruption that runs deeper than just local government, and the stakes are higher than they banked on. And when Brick also discovers some terrifying information about her past, the stakes turn deadly...

Winner of the ASA/HQ Commercial Fiction Prize, 2020.