Open File (Cliff Hardy series)
Cliff Hardy, the Australian private investigator, has had his license revoked. With a bit of money put aside and no pressing matters to attend to, he decides to take a trip and perhaps think about what he might want to do with himself, now that he has no career. While he’s packing up some old papers, he comes across an open case from the late 1980s. It was a particularly intricate case that began with a missing-persons investigation; remembering it now, Hardy is transported back to the (relatively) early days of his career, when he was younger, brasher, and perhaps a bit more foolhardy. After Appeal Denied (2008), readers might have wondered if the Hardy series was coming to an end. Thankfully, this doesn’t appear to be the case, although this “placeholder” novel (which takes us out of sequence, into the past) could be the author’s way of figuring out in what direction he wants to take the series. Whatever the reason for the journey down memory lane, fans of this consistently entertaining series will be thrilled to see that Hardy doesn’t appear to be going anywhere just yet. --David Pitt