In Deep (Hannah Tree: Private Detective Book 5)

A Missing Fiancé. A Stolen Painting. A Brewing Gang War.

Private investigator Hannah Tree is used to chaos. But when a dancer’s fiancé goes missing just before a big show, things spiral fast—from a fake kidnapping to real danger.

Hannah sets a trap for the scammers. Instead, she’s kidnapped. The culprits are desperate small-time crooks hiding from a mobster whose daughter, Freba, they helped run away. Now Freba is gone, and they want Hannah to find her—before her brutal father, Yorov, does.

As Hannah digs deeper, she uncovers links between Freba’s disappearance and a stolen painting tied to her boss. The painting has landed in Yorov’s hands. If Hannah can bring him his daughter, maybe she can get the artwork back.

But Freba is hiding with her gangster boyfriend, son of Yorov’s rival. What began as a scam turns into a violent power struggle between two crime families—with Hannah caught in the middle.

Smart, sharp, and never quite safe, In Deep is a layered mystery packed with wit, grit, and high stakes.

Start reading In Deep today and step into Hannah Tree’s wildest case yet.

Excerpt from the book

‘Step — kick — turn — and one — and two — kick — What the hell is that, Laurie? You trying for a specky? If you are, get the fuck out of here and join the local football club. And someone’s missing. Dear Jesus, why am I wasting my time with… oh, you’ve deigned to grace us with your presence, Mr Bossert.’ Gary, our mercurial and brilliant dance master ostentatiously examined his watch. ‘Only half an hour late today. We’re stepping up. What are you planning for tomorrow? An hour perhaps?’

I’d forgotten Marky’s surname was Bossert so it took me a moment to realise who Gary was talking to. I thought Marky was going to burst into tears as he scrambled into his place in the chorus line. ‘I’m so sorry, Gary, I had a problem—’

‘You had a problem so we all have to suffer? Who the fuck do you think you are, fucking Marilyn Monroe?’ Gary was profane at the best of times and this wasn’t one of them. ‘Right, now that our star has arrived, maybe we can get on with the rehearsal. Might I remind you all that we open this show in three weeks.’

He turned back to the job at hand. I strolled over to chat with Charlie, our stage manager and my immediate boss. I’d been assistant stage manager with Starr Follies for nearly four years. Because my long estranged family decided a mad relative was better PR than a bad relative, I was serving a custodial jail sentence in a posh psychiatric clinic when I met Gloria.

She was resolving a personal crisis when she helped me rescue my roommate from a bullying husband. Afterwards she offered me a job in her company, Starr Follies, suggesting that I was doing her a favour. She also encouraged me to turn my obsession with justice into a private detective agency.

Marky, always difficult, was behaving even more erratically than usual. He was always ready for a fight, and often caused them by, among other things, upstaging other performers, sledging people until they blew up and moving costumes so that people couldn’t find them before always claiming he was the victim. He’d made enemies across the entire company. He got away with it because he was the best dancer we had, apart from Gary himself. But he lived on the edge of being fired all the time.

My job, at the now very successful drag theatre revue in Richmond, Melbourne, was to deal with all this. We’d developed from an okay, niche venue to one of the best light entertainment companies in the country. Our shows were always sold out and not long ago we were featured in a national festival of the arts. Not bad going for a theatre that some of the snootier critics and arts administrators never admitted to knowing about, much less visiting.

This one was another possible winner, a tribute to the musical Cabaret and the choreography of Bob Fosse, a twentieth century great. I doubt anyone but Gary could have combined those two in a drag show. But it did require a high level of dance competence. And even though others were yapping at his heels, Marky was still the best in the company.