'... ​​a block of shadow pushing against a diffusing moonlight, the golden halo spreading out into the vineyards from its sides draining into the night like blood on a carpet'

People-smuggling, corruption and murder test the boundaries of truth and freedom in this explosive thriller.

On Fremantle's streets, in the dead of winter, a homeless man, an academic, a police detective and the agents of a wealthy businessman collide with explosive consequences. Murder, cover-ups, and corruption of unimaginable dimensions expose the politics of asylum-seeker boat arrivals and head-in-sand attitudes towards homelessness in a political contest with ever-more desperate combatants.

Art Lazaar is in the thick of it. He is a writer with a poetic licence that ties him to a past he can't escape and contracted to a mysterious government agency while doubling as an academic spying on his boss. In the week the election is announced, he receives a call from a figure connected to that same past. He must protect a young asylum seeker running from those who murdered her brother. It's not a request he can refuse.

Spellbinding, suspenseful, populated by complex characters in a world deeply etched in our psyches, this thrilling, propulsive story does not let the politics of truth and freedom rest easily.