OBSERVER: Death at Booroomba
Authors tend to fall into one of two categories – fiction or non-fiction.
But Alison Booth (pictured) defies that categor-isation as she is an award-winning academic at Australian National University and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia.
Yet when she is not lecturing or writing academic papers, she pens cracking stories with an historical basis, and her latest novel is Death at Booroomba.
It is 1915 and Jack O‘Rourke is about to leave for the First World War. Shortly before embarkation, he rescues a man from drowning in Sydney Harbour, pastoralist Samuel Lomond from Eden on the NSW south coast.
Fast forward to Jack’s return to Australia in 1919 as a traumatised ex-solider, when he is surprised to hear that Lomond has been murdered and Jack has inherited Lomond’s property called Booroomba.
But this gift is not without its complications, including a neighbour coveting water rights, a struggling newspaper proprietor, and a vengeful labourer.
Then there is a secret affair and two Russian emigres, who lead Jack to a decades-old conspiracy and the truth of what happened to Lomond.
Death at Booromba delves into what is happening in in a small town hiding big secrets and explores the destructive aftermath of war on those who served on the front line.
Alison Booth’s new novel is a definite page-turner and is published by Ventura Press. Find it online or at a favourite bookstore.
Julie Houghton