Synopsis.

Paramedic Lauren Yates stumbles into a world of trouble the night she discovers a killer and his victim in an inner Sydney alley. When the killer threatens to make her life hell if she tells the police what she’s seen, she believes him – he’s Thomas Werner, her sister’s violent ex, father to Lauren’s niece, and not a man to cross.

But when another victim of a stabbing reveals to Lauren with his dying breath that Werner attacked him, too, she finds herself with blood on her hands and Detective Ella Marconi on her back. Ella is keen to cement her temporary placement in the homicide squad and views Lauren as the perfect witness for this latest murder because she can testify to the victim’s last words.

Ella soon realises Lauren is hiding something, however, and while her colleagues label her suspicion an obsession, she begins her own investigation. But the harder Ella pushes, the more Lauren resists, and the worse the threat from Werner becomes, putting them both in increasingly serious jeopardy.

Author's Comments

The Darkest Hour is my second novel to be published, and will hit the shops in Australia in May 2008. (We changed the title from Panic for a number of reasons, not least of which is that The Darkest Hour just fits better.)

I feel a special fondness for this book. I took roughly four years to write Frantic then had just one to write this, so it was a real test to hold my nerve, believe I could do it, and just keep working away. Also, I didn’t realise how much the release of Frantic and the accompanying promotional activities would distract me (though I loved every minute of it – who wouldn’t?), and in the end I had to get extensions on my deadline. To finally hand it in and get good reports was wonderful, and I’m looking forward to holding a ‘real live’ copy of it as much as I did with Frantic.