Natalie Conyer introduced Sydney detective Jackie Rose in her Ned Kelly Award short-listed second novel Shadow City. In that book, Jackie shared the limelight with South African cop Schalk Laurens, the protagonist of Conyer’s first book Present Tense (which won the Ned Kelly Award for best debut in 2020). In Conyer’s third novel, Finding the Bones, Jackie is front and centre and in all sorts of ethical trouble as she investigates a cold case that is quickly heating up and which comes very close to home.
Finding the Bones opens with, well, the finding of the bones. The bones in question turn out to be the remains of Belle Fitzgerald, an anti-development campaigner who lived in Sydney’s Kings Cross and disappeared in 1988. Kings Cross was Sydney’s red-light district and at that time was the centre of a web of organised crime and corruption that included the police and politicians. Belle is the daughter of a wealthy family who has found a life for herself in Kings Cross and does not want it destroyed by rapacious development. She starts to organize the locals to fight the developers, but that effort puts her in the crosshairs of the local organised crime.
Due to the ongoing high profile of the Fitzgerald case, Jackie Rose and her team are assigned but aware that there is interest from the top in getting a result. But there is another reason that Jackie is tapped – Jackie’s father is celebrity cop Stanton Rose, who made his name by going undercover in the Cross in the late 1980s to bring down a cadre of corrupt police. Due to his notoriety and knowledge of the time, the powers that be are keen to have Stanton consult on the case. But very quickly Jackie finds that Stanton might be more connected with Belle than either of them would like.
The character of Jackie Rose, and the way she navigates the ethical minefield that she finds herself in, drives this book. Jackie is a great investigator but struggles in the Police Force under the shadow of her famous father while also idolising him to some extent. Jackie is still scarred by the disappearance of her mother when she was seven and having to navigate her own relationship with her 19-year-old son Luke. And at the same time, Jackie is trying to understand her own, slightly self-destructive approach to relationships.
Central to this book though, is the city of Sydney itself. It is refreshing that we are starting to see more Australian crime novels come out of the bush and back into the cities. Conyer draws a colourful portrait of Kings Cross and its surrounds from a time in which it was both a bohemian enclave and the centre of a web of crime and corruption. As Conyer discusses in her Author’s Note, the central crime in the novel was inspired by the disappearance of Juanita Nielsen in the mid-1970s and the exploits of other colourful figures from the time. Although as Conyer says, these are sparks that allowed her to create her alternative version of 1980s Kings Cross. But she also sends Jackie and her team around the city, exploring its diversity (and dropping the names of a number of actual pubs and eateries along the way).
Finding the Bones is another compulsive crime novel with the lot. At its heart is the juxtaposition of the lives of two very singular headstrong women. Their stories are delivered in the context of a fascinating dive into an alternative version of Sydney history, a compelling contemporary cold case investigation driven by media and political pressure and a cast of engaging characters with plenty of emotional and ethical challenges to navigate.
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