Book reviews with Torquay Books, July 2020

Enid
by Robert Wainwright
Enid Lindeman stood almost six feet tall, with silver hair and flashing turquoise eyes.
The girl from Strathfield in Sydney stopped traffic in Manhattan, silenced gamblers in Monte Carlo and dared walk a pet cheetah on a diamond collar through Hyde Park in London.
In early twentieth-century society, when women were expected to be demure and obedient, the granddaughter of Hunter Valley wine pioneer Henry Lindeman waltzed through life to the beat of her own drum. She drove an ambulance in World War I and escaped Allied airmen behind enemy lines in World War II, played bridge with Somerset Maugham and entertained Hollywood royalty in the world’s most expensive private home on the Riviera, allegedly paid for by her winnings in a game of cards.
Enid captivated men with her beauty, outlived four husbands – two shipping magnates, a war hero and a larger-than-life Irish earl – spent two great fortunes and earned the nickname ‘Lady Killmore’. From Sydney to New York, London to Paris and Cairo to Kenya, Robert Wainwright tells the fascinating story of a life lived large on the world stage.
Allen & Unwin $32.99

The Bluffs
by Kyle Perry
At the bottom of the world, there is an island.
It is a land of rugged wilderness, of ice and snow and blistering heat, of the oldest trees on earth… they say extinct tigers still roam there. They say other things roam, too.
When a school group of teenage girls go missing in the remote wilderness of Tasmania’s Great Western Tiers, the people of Limestone Creek are immediately on alert. Not long ago, six young girls went missing in the area of those dangerous bluffs, and the legends of ‘the Hungry Man’ still haunt locals to this day. Now, authorities can determine that the teacher, Eliza Ellis, was knocked unconscious, so someone on the mountain was up to foul play. Jordan Murphy, father of missing student Jasmine and the town’s local dealer, instantly becomes prime suspect, but Detective Con Badenhorst knows that in a town this size – with corrupt cops, small-town politics, and a teenage YouTube sensation – anyone could be hiding something, and bluffing comes second nature.
When a body is found, mauled at the bottom of a cliff, suspicion turns to a wild animal – but that can’t explain why she, like all victims past and present, was discovered barefoot, with her shoes found nearby, laces neatly tied. What happened up there on the bluffs? Somebody knows… unless the local legends are true…
Penguin $32.99