title: The Big Dead Dry
author: Stanton-Noble, Portia
description: Would you drive into a small Australian town in drought, packed with intrigue, lust and murder?Brumby Flat, a small country town in South Australia, suddenly rises to notoriety and becomes the centre of the world through a baffling series of murders and accidental deaths.Raquel Willaston and her son, Steve, have just moved into town, and Raquel soon gets caught up in the local goings on, whether she wants to or not, and a love entanglement she’d rather not deal with.The quiet arrival of a mysterious homeless man and his subsequent brutal murder at the base of the town silos is the catalyst for the chaos which erupts.City-based Senior Detective Phillip Duncan is in charge of the ensuing investigations and has to cope with some colourful and quirky characters to find out who the killer is. There’s Anabella Williams who wears vintage clothes and still lives in the 1950s and is renowned for her ‘killer cakes’. Famous silo mural painter Phil Proctor, newly arrived from New York, seems to know more than he lets on. There’s Chris Jones, an ex-military officer, who lives his life with military-like precision. Bridie Browne, who runs the local post office, seems more preoccupied with the male of the species rather than actually sorting mail.And then there’s ‘The Raindrops Shop’ run by Bette Mitchell which offers a range of merchandise completely at odds with a town in the middle of a two-year drought.Nothing is as it seems in Brumby Flat. It’s going to be a tough ask to identify the serial killer hiding amongst them.