‘Mad, Bad and Dead’ by Sherryl Clark

Published by Verve Books,
23 August 2022.
ISBN: 978-0-85730-820-7 (PBO)

Judi and Andre, co-owners of a pub in Candlebark near Melbourne, are struggling to make a profit. She also cares for Mia her orphaned niece. One night she is woken by the incessantly ringing telephone. On answering it she receives a really nasty threatening call. Completely baffled, later that morning she rings Connor a policeman friend of hers, who promises to investigate.

Then for no apparent reason one of the employees at the pub is murdered, shot in her bed and her young fourteen-year-old daughter goes missing. It is soon discovered that the murdered woman had fairly recently changed her name. What and who was she hiding from?

Judi is reluctantly caught up in the ensuing murder investigation and also receives more nasty phone calls, but cannot understand why. She wonders if they have anything to do with threats from Bronwen, a woman who runs a nearby health farm. Her “clients” frequently sneak off and eat at the pub. She accuses Judi and Andre of “luring them away”.

The fourteen-year-old daughter is then found but refuses to tell police why she went into hiding, she is obviously scared to death. For some reason she does not trust the police. Something happened in Sydney to have made her mother change their names and her daughter blames what happened on the police there.

Then there is another murder, a man is shot in the street outside the pub, and it is soon discovered he had connections to drug dealing.

As if Judi hasn’t enough to deal with, she receives a phone call from her mother’s nursing home to say she has had a fall and is very ill, not expected to live. However, things that happened to Judi and her brother Andy when they were young, led her to hate their mother and she will not go and see her.

To add to the problems at the pub, a man books a room for several nights and Judi takes a dislike to him, certainly does not trust him. What was he doing creeping around outside in the middle of the night on more than one occasion?

When things do not seem as though they can get any worse, they do, especially when it involves gangland bosses.

There are two eprevious books in the series involving the same characters.  I will be seeking these earlier books out. A highly recommended thoroughly absorbing thriller.
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Reviewer: Tricia Chappell  

Sherryl Clark is the author of the Judi Westerholm series set in the Australia outback. She also has had two collections of poetry for adults published by Pariah Press - Edge (1990) and Thicker Than Water (1999) and is a co-editor of Poetrix magazine.  Her most recent book is Mad, Bad and Dead the third in the series.

Tricia Chappell. I have a great love of books and reading, especially crime and thrillers. I play the occasional game of golf (when I am not reading). My great love is cruising especially to far flung places, when there are long days at sea for plenty more reading! I am really enjoying reviewing books and have found lots of great new authors.