[Sandra Mahoney 02] • The White Tower

"In years to come the world will look to *The White Tower* as the moment when Australian crime fiction got up off its hind legs and howled: We Are Here."

---Ken Bruen, author of *The Dramatist*

"'Jumpers,' McCallum was saying. 'Jumpers are---well, in my experience jumpers are always badly disturbed. They choose to jump because it's so violent.'"

The body of Niall Howley, a young man with golden hair, is found at the base of the Telstra Tower---the famed communications tower atop Canberra's Black Mountain.  Local authorities are content to accept Niall's death as a straightforward suicide. But his apparent "suicide note" leaves many unanswered questions.

            The note is an image on Niall's computer screen---a digitalized image of himself sprawled at the bottom of cliff . . . an exact replica of the positioning of his body as it was found near the Telstra Tower. Desperate for answers, and fearing murder, his mother seeks out the help of Sandra Mahoney, a computer crime consultant.

            Niall had been---until recently---an integral member in a role-playing internet game---and his suicide turns out to be bizarre echo of his own character's death. Niall's death, and its connection to the fate of his internet character force Mahoney to reexamine every angle.

            While juggling her own baby daughter, a Russian lover, a needy dog, and a plaguing ex-husband, Sandra races across the globe in pursuit of truth on behalf of a mother who wants to know how a game killed her son. And finds that the threads of truth and illusion can easily wind into a game of manipulation and deceit.

            Australian author Dorothy Johnston returns with the second book featuring Inspector Sandra Mahoney; in a thrilling and intelligent mystery that searches for one mother's truth.

International Praise for *The **White** **Tower*

"This is an artfully seductive crime story."

---*The Age (**Australia**)*

"Here's a crime novel that justifies the real meaning of the term. It is a thriller and a very fine one, but it is also literary in the sense of highly intelligent, learned, and beautifully crafted."

---Ken Bruen, author of *The Dramatist*