Following on from the excellent debut THE FALL BETWEEN, author Darcy Tindale's BURNING MOUNTAIN shows absolutely no sign of the dreaded "second novel syndrome". The action here is as believable, and relevant to the place as in the earlier novel, Detective Rebecca Giles as hardworking as before, the team she works with as full of the small problems of life whilst also tackling a difficult job with dedication, and the past is allowed to leak into the current in a very apt, and sometimes personal manner.

For those that didn't read the first novel (you really should btw), Detective Rebecca Giles is back in the town of her birth, where her father is succumbing to an awful, and deadly, ailment. She had one of those childhoods, mother dead at a very young age, she was a typical country kid, raised by a caring but frequently overworked cop, Superintendent Benjamin Giles. Until she was suddenly sent away to boarding school, something she never quite understood, although the discovery of a skeleton buried on Mount Wingen sets off a chain of events, and unearths a suspect who starts to bring back some worrying memories.

The skeleton is eventually identified as fifteen-year-old Oliver who went missing in 2006 when he was hiking on nearby Burning Mountain with 4 school-friends. Supposedly, after a bit of a kids spat, at the top of the mountain, he'd hiked back to the pickup point where his mother expected to meet him, on his own. He wasn't there when she arrived and despite Giles senior pulling out all the stops with search parties combing the area, no trace of him was ever found. Until a skull is unearthed in that nearby location by a dog on a walk with its owner, and a well dug grave is then identified. Cue the difficulties associated with the forensic search for the body, then the retrieval, and finally identification, although the investigation itself has a bit of a head start because there aren't that many missing people in the area and there are clues on the skull that indicate a rough age for the victim.

Luckily Giles senior is still well enough to have his memories of the case, and the ability to talk about it, and he provides Giles the younger with an unexpected name, based on the loose idea that he was in the area at the time, and there were rumours, reports and worries about that man already. A time when the suspect lived next door to the Giles family home, and exhibited a lot of behaviour that looking at it with the eyes of an adult, Rebecca Giles can clearly see as the grooming of children.

Those revelations send her on a spiral of remembering, whilst also being very keen to catch this man, still resident in the area, still suspected it turns out. It's only the pointed guidance of her senior officer that stops her from doing some really precipitous things, as the investigation into who killed and buried young Oliver links up with old allegations of child abuse and child grooming. But Tindale isn't finished with her readers - not by a long shot, so there are plenty of twists and turns in this story, including (hard not to feel some pleasure in) the death of a domestic violence perpetrator and the story of his wife and child, before the final revelations fall into place.

Rebecca Giles is a great character - very real and believable. Her relationship with her Dad is touching, and his illness all the more sad because he was obviously a bloody good cop, and a loving, caring, if only slightly haphazard Dad. The sense of place is well delivered and the way that crimes intertwine with the life of small rural locations works, as does that idea of the things that people knew in the past and present and didn't talk about, being part of the stuff that comes back to bite hard years later.

4.5 stars
Five went up Burning Mountain, but only four returned home. Eighteen years ago, fifteen-year-old Oliver Lavine disappeared without a trace.

This is the second story featuring Detective Rebecca Giles, as she investigates the discovery of a skull, as well as other crimes, in Muswellbrook, in the upper Hunter Valley.

I loved the quintessentially Australian bush setting and the complex cast of characters. This is an intricately plotted crime fiction story, with interesting police procedural elements. This could be read as a standalone story, although I would definitely recommend reading The Fall Between, which was a fantastic debut novel from Darcy Tindale.

With thanks to Penguin Random House Australia, Darcy Tindale and NetGalley for the advanced review copy.

Things really escalated towards the end of the book, and wow this story kept be reading long into the night!

I am very keen to read what comes next from Darcy Tindale.

a great story of 4 boys go hiking in the bush but only 3 come back Oliver never come back and its a intriguing story of what happen to him

Detective Rebecca Giles in Mussel brook tries to find out what happen to him as a skull is found is it Oliver 's or someone else

a lot of suspense who is the skull that was found
thanks net gallery for letting me read this book

loved this book

Now that's how I like them written. An unsolved mystery, varied characters and solid policing to get to the bottom of it all.

After absolutely loving Darcy's first novel, The Fall Between, I was excited to see this follow up come out. There is no second book hangover here.

When a skull is discovered by an errant dog on Mt Wingen, the police soon turn their investigation towards a missing persons case almost twenty years old. Could this skull belong to Oliver Lavine?

DI Rebecca Giles along with her team are tasked with re-interviewing the four youths that were with Oliver that day at Burning Mountain and seeing if they can glean anything further out of them. I visualised these interactions like a scene from the TV show Cold Case. As the past is dragged to the present we see all their old insecurities, bravado, regrets and dreams resurface.

I loved the interspersing of other investigations into the story and wondering what link they may have and whether they will help or hinder the investigation into the skull and who it may belong to. The array of characters from cocky wannabes like Paul Cooper, dreamers like Bell Marrone, Bob Bradbury who tries so hard but just can't quite make things work, to no hoper thugs like Trent Thicket and creepy predators like Bernard Nestor gave this story amazing depth.

While this book can certainly be read without reading The Fall Between first, I loved seeing the continuing story of Rebecca and her relationship with her father, retired Detective Benjamin Giles. The girl needs a holiday though.

Fabulous follow up book, when's the next one?

Darcy Tindale was shortlisted for her debut novel The Fall Between, a book which introduced readers to detective Rebecca Giles. In that first book, Giles had relocated from Sydney to Muswellbrook, in the upper Hunter Valley, to look after her ageing father, also a former policeman but also uncover some family secrets. The sequel, Burning Mountain, finds Giles involved in a cold case which reaches back into her childhood.
Giles is on leave when a skull is found on Mount Wingen, before long it is suspected that the skull (and nearby remains) belong to Oliver Lavine, a teenager who went missing eighteen years before while on a hike in the area with four friends. The Lavine case was one of her father’s cases and he had always suspected their neighbour, a horse-riding teacher who was also suspected of being a paedophile but could not find the evidence. Oliver’s four companions from that day are still in town and at least two of them are planning a little more criminal activity of their own. While in another story thread, local Amy Thicket and her ten-year-old son Joe are trying to manage with Amy’s violent, abusive husband. All of these stories will collide as the investigation proceeds.
Rebecca Giles once again is a fairly messy but believable and effective investigator. Her relationship with her father is well observed and again the investigation allows her to see her own past in a new light. But as with The Fall Between, Tindale is interested in a broader range of characters, and Burning Mountain has a number of interesting, if extremely flawed, side characters.
Australian cold case crime stories about missing teenage bushwalkers have become a little common place recently. This premise allows for an exploration of the toxic nature of teenage friendships and the impact of long held secrets coming to light. Just this year we have had Christian White’s The Ledge and Bronwyn Rivers’ The Reunion which both use a similar premise. While these books share some DNA with Burning Mountain, all three take different approaches to dealing with their subject matter. Tindale’s is a more down-the line procedural but she also layers on a couple of additional present day subplots, one of Tarantino-esque half-baked criminals (who also happen to be suspects in the original crime) and the other of domestic violence.
Burning Mountain is a great follow up to Tindale’s debut. She uses the landscape well (Burning Mountain is a real place in the Hunter Valley where an underground cola seam has been burning for thousands of years) and ranges over a diverse cast of local characters. What also stands out here is the number of threads that Tindale sets up and then brings together for a tense finale which, once dealt with, allows for one final twist.

In this second instalment of Darcy Tindale’s Detective Giles series two cold cases feature - one a missing person’s case, the other that of an alleged pedophile.. The book follows the key players of these cases, all who seem to be living disappointed, thwarted lives. There’s a sense that Detective Rebecca Giles, living once again in her home town of Musselbrook to be close to her ailing father, is treading water in her life too. The discovery of a skull reactivates these investigations and sets a chain of events in motion that lead to a tragedy and the solving of the cases. Darcy Tindale is interested in the relationships between parents and children, in love, self interest and sacrifice and the resolution of the threads of the story lines causes her readers to reflect on this. I liked Detective Giles as a character - she is flawed, self contained, a thinker.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the advance review copy.

Five went up, only four came down
In 2006, fifteen year old Oliver went hiking with friends and vanished without a trace. Almost twenty years later, Detective Rebecca Giles is called to bushland as a skull has been found. Detective Giles needs to find the friends that were there that day, as she is convinced they know more than they told police back then. But when she discusses the case with her Superintendent, another suspect is thrown into the mix, one much closer to home.

I really enjoyed this rural setting, not too far from where I lived at one time in my life and the characters, all with secrets. There was a lot going on in this one, particularly once I reached the midpoint and it was so clever the way the author unfolded the various threads in this one. Another thoroughly enjoyable novel.