Lugarno — Peter Corris

Drug-dealing and corruption are at the center of Cliff Hardy's 24th case  

I was about to punch in the number when a man loomed up beside me. When I say loomed I mean loomed -- he was tall and wide with a shaven head, and the pale hand that plucked the mobile from my grasp and threw it away was super-sized. "Hey," I protested. He just stood there, a pace away now -- a hundred kilos of bone and muscle in T-shirt and jeans. I had a gun and a tyre iron and I thought I'd need both to make an impression on him, but they were in the car. For now, it was just me.

When it's only 24 hours into a new case and PI Cliff Hardy's already been heavied, you know that the job is going to get his full attention. Cliff has been hired by high-flying consultant Martin Price to find out who's been supplying heroin to Price's teenage daughter -- who in turn has got her beautiful young stepmother hooked. The wealthy suburb of Lugarno seems an unlikely hotbed of drug-dealing and corruption, but Cliff is finding out the hard way that crime and violence come calling even at posh waterside addresses.