Jack Adams

Backpacker, Soleil ‘Sunny’ Reyer is gone. Tanned, glowing and star of the Missing poster; no one thought fruit-picking could be deadly.

Journalist, Jessica Steyn was the last person to give Sunny a lift. Assigned the biggest story in her career, Jessica is on the job. Dig, dig, dig … until she buries herself.

The cold case file never leaves his desk in the same way that Detective Nick Clarkson is stuck in Strand Harbour fifteen years after Sunny disappeared. Less hair, marriage over, no sign of Sunny.

Author Coen Watson’s people are water people; his trust in it is marrow-deep – he’s counting on Strand Harbour to cure his writer’s block. Unpacking, he forces open a drawer corroded by salt air to find a faded Missing poster for Soleil Reyer. The author begins picking at old wounds.

Adam couldn’t wait… his Uncle Allan was coming to watch his cricket game this afternoon; Adam’s father was always too busy to get there. Uncle Allan believed Adam and his best friend, Nate, would one day be chosen for the State side if they kept practicing… Adam’s bowling was really improving. Adam didn’t have an Uncle Allan.

“Jack Adams skillfully unravels this unnerving tale of suspense with a keen sense of place and character. Asylum is well worth the price of admission.” B. Michael Radburn.

Joe was their friend; the man they spoke to through the wire fence of the Lunatic Asylum, along the banks of the Bremer River, and 10-year-old best friends, Nathan Walker and Adam Murphy, knew he wasn’t insane. He couldn’t be… he must have been locked up my mistake. Joe was an artist, and gentle, although sometimes he was confused and had burn marks on his skin. Then, one day, Joe was gone; life went on.

Now hitting their thirties—jobs and divorces in their wake—ex-cop, current P.I. Nate and psychiatrist Adam decide to share office space and a receptionist in Stones Corner, Brisbane… home to the second stores and more coffee outlets than inhabitants. It’s there that the letter arrives advising them that they have received ‘Expectations’. A quaint, old-fashioned bequest delivered by a solicitor which amounts to an inheritance for two boys – left by Joseph O’Connell, a missing-believed-deceased former patient at the River Park Lunatic Asylum.

The two men begin to investigate and start sharing more than office space; this case needs both of their skills to find Joe. Fueled by the appearance of a ‘hanging man’ wearing a sign with the word ‘Truth’ written on it, who makes an appearance at a ghost tour through the now-defunct asylum, Nate and Adam find the more they dig, the more dangerous it gets.

Eleven-year-old Nate wasn’t happy. There was a new kid on the block named Griffin Maxwell and he wanted Adam to be his best friend. That was Nate’s job, they had sworn they were blood brothers forever. Two days after Adam’s birthday party when Adam received a strange birthday present from Griffin, the Maxwell family was gone.

Twenty years later, Griffin Maxwell is back. And he wants Adam to come out and play.

Twelve-year-old Adam Murphy didn’t know anyone who had died, nor did his best friend, Nate Delaney. While testing new speedometers on their Malvern Star bikes, that changed – the pair witnessed beautiful Holly Castle, 16, hitch a ride to Sydney seeking fame and was never seen again. Presumed dead.

Twenty years later, Adam’s model mother, the IT Girl Winsome Keeley, gets hitched to the nation’s favourite singer, Jack Bernham, and the official photographer—Eric Castle—recognises Nate from their school years. The younger brother of the missing girl is still pursuing his sister’s cold case.

Adam and Nate are invited to take a ride.

For twelve-year-old Adam Murphy and Nate Delaney, Debrov’s Carnival World was the best day out with its ghost train and dodgem cars, but not everyone felt the same. The loud and unsightly carnival run by Rayco Dobrev and his fortune-telling wife, Gerta, was unpopular with new residents in the expanding estate who wanted it gone at any cost. That price was a riot and a life lost.

Eighteen years later, the carnival is deserted, an eyesore for residents – the riots and death but a memory. Except for one girl, Laura Armstrong, who is all grown up and wants Nate to find out what really happened to her father—the neighbourhood group leader—all those years ago.

Adam and Nate are about to be frightened by the ghost train all over again.