Author(s): Cornelia Read

Thriller

This fresh, funny, fabulous debut crime novel by Cornelia Read has received rave reviews throughout the United States.

The girls' hair fanned out prettily along a bed of moss, as though carefully arranged. You could see the dark gashes in their throats, but the garlands were camouflaged - white against blonde, near black against brunette.

When fledgling journalist Madeline Dare stumbles on dog tags found at the site of an unsolved double murder, she's not sure she's the right person to write about it. After all, chatty puff-pieces like '1001 Ways with Chicken Wings' are more her speed than an investigative piece on the brutal murder of two young women years before.

But soon Maddie is obsessed by the 'Rose Girls' case - so called for the thorny garlands found on the dead women's heads. Eerily, the name on the dog tags is that of her favourite cousin, Lapthorne Townsend, golden boy of a still wealthy branch of Maddie's old money family.

Maddie believes the delightfully droll Lapthorne is innocent of the killings, and sets out on a quest to clear his name. Her investigation triggers a string of grisly new murders, the trail of blood leading right to Maddie's door . . . First published 2006.