Charlotte Pass

When a skeleton is discovered on Mount Stillwell, in the remote village of Charlotte Pass, high in the Snowy Mountains, a chain of events was set in motion leading back to the still unresolved missing person’s report for Celia Delaney, who disappeared from the ski resort at the height of an unrepresented blizzard in 1964.

Lee Christine in her first rural suspense novel Charlotte Pass, has created a storyline filled with suspense and mystery as she carefully establishes the reality that the past does not always remain in the past, and murder will often be committed twice to cover long buried tracks.

It is the beginning of Winterfest in the remote ski village of Charlotte Pass, high in the Kosciuszko National Park. The village is snowed in, presenting perfect conditions for this Annual event. A famous ‘local’ Aiden Smythe is returning to Charlotte Pass to launch the Festival. All is on target for a massively successful event until ski instructor Vanessa Bell makes the gruesome discovery of human bones buried in a snow drift.

Sydney Detective Pierce Ryder, along with his new young partner Detective Constable Mitchell Flowers, a millennial whose main ambition is to become a police prosecutor, are sent to the area to try and discover whether there is a connection between the more than thirty-year-old unsolved disappearance of Celia Delaney, and the possibility that the discovery could be her.

Reluctantly he begins the investigation into what is beginning to look like anything other than a straight forward missing person case and when another murder is carried out, for no obvious reason, Ryder begins to feel the pressure to make an arrest before things become far worse.

A man with some serious grief in his life, he and Vanessa Bell begin to discover something warm and wonderful developing in their lives, which is placed in serious jeopardy as the days roll relentlessly onward, the murderer still undiscovered, the snow growing deeper, and another blizzard is descending on Charlotte Pass; a blizzard which looks set to equal the blizzard of 1964.

Will the mountains give over their long-held secrets or will the murders remain unsolved? As the tension builds and so many come under suspicion, it looks like the killer may have managed to escape until Vanessa’s life this time, is under serious threat?

Lee Christine has certainly crafted a novel that is guaranteed to keep the light burning, the wine glass full and the pages turning, as the gripping suspense ensures the final page must be reached before the lights are turned out.

As a debut into rural suspense Charlotte Pass is a real beauty!