Michael Brissenden
Smoke
Affirm Press, 2024
“Atmospheric, fast-paced, and almost unbearably tense – I was deeply immersed in Alex Markov’s dangerous, unpredictable world. Brissenden has created characters you’ll care about and a page-turner that’ll keep you guessing. This is a cracking crime novel and his best book yet.”
What secrets lie in the ashes?
After a brutal wildfire tears through the town of Jasper in the Californian sierras, a body is discovered in a shed. It looks like an open-and-shut case of accidental death – until further investigation reveals that the victim was locked in from the outside.
Years after leaving Jasper, Detective Alex Markov has been sent back under the shadow of an LAPD corruption investigation. She is convinced that the man, a family friend, was murdered opportunistically under the cover of the fire. As the smoke clears, Alex reveals a town corrupt to its core – but exposing that corruption could destroy her and the people she loves. Will she ignore the crookedness and deceit, or face the consequences of pursuing an inconvenient truth?
Dead Letters
Hachette, 2021
A dead politician. A decades-old unsolved murder. A hornet's nest is about to be stirred.
Counter terrorism expert Sid Allen knows nothing good ever comes from a phone call at 5 am. Politician Dan LeRoi, Chairman of the Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, has been shot. Four bullets to the head. The crime scene is chaotic. Homicide. Counter Terrorism. Media. And for Sid, hunting the killer is going to get complicated.
Journalist Zephyr Wilde is complicated. She's tenacious and she's got Sid's number. Sid knows the gossip: how Zephyr's mother was murdered when Zephyr was a kid. He doesn't know that Zephyr is still getting letters from her long-dead mother. But when he learns that Dan LeRoi was helping Zephyr look into her mother's death, he realises that lines are going to be crossed. A cop should not be talking to a journalist.
As they both ask too many questions, Sid and Zephyr stir up a hornet's nest of corruption. Knowing who to trust is going to mean the difference between solving a crime and being a victim. The question is, which side will they end up on.
A compulsive thriller that takes up from the seedy streets of Sydney to the corridors of power in Canberra. For readers who love Peter Temple and Michael Connelly.
“Utterly compelling. With Dead Letters, Brissenden joins the top ranks of Australian crime writers.”
About the Author
Michael Brissenden was a journalist and foreign correspondent with the ABC for 35 years. He was posted to Moscow, Brussels and Washington, and worked in Canberra for many years in various roles, including as the political editor for ABC TV's 7.30 and as a reporter with the ABC's investigative television documentary program Four Corners. Through his reporting, Michael has covered bushfires both in Australia and overseas, including in California. He has published three previous books.
