Wisecracking social worker Stella Hardy returns, and this time she's battling outlaw bikie gangs, corrupt cops, and a powerful hunger for pani puri.
On a stormy Halloween night, Stella gets a call from her best friend, Detective Phuong Nguyen. Phuong has a problem. Or rather her lover, Bruce Copeland, does.
Copeland has been implicated in a police-corruption scandal, and the only person who can help prove his innocence has disappeared. The missing man is Isaac Mortimer, a drug dealer associated with the notorious motorcycle gang The Corpse Flowers. Reluctantly, Stella offers to help track him down - and it isn't long before she is way in over her head- evading bikies, drinking tea with drug dealers, and, worst of all, hanging out in the Macca's carpark with a bunch of smart-alec teenagers.
Then, when Stella discovers that local street kids are being groomed for some sinister purpose - and that a psychopath with bust face tattooed across his knuckles is pursuing her - she realises she has her work cut out for her.
Sounds easy, right? Too easy.
'Stella Hardy rips through her world with wit, guts, brains and vulnerability, blazing fresh trails through the twisted urban landscapes of modern Australia. J.M. Green's prose is blistering - funny, real and nuanced in just the right proportions. This is my kind of crime writing' Peter Doyle, award-winning author of the Billy Glasheen crime novels
'Stella Hardy is wonderful - all over the place, like a broken compass, and yet she always manages to head in the right direction. Funny, complex, and very human, in Stella, J.M. Green has created a character readers simply love.' William McInnes
