Tropic of Death — Robert Sims

When a little girl finds a severed head buried in sand on a beach in Whitley, the locals are sent into a tailspin. Little do they know it's only the first of series of grisly murders that will sully their normally idyllic resort town. After the body of local greens activist Rachel Macarthur is discovered minus her head and hands, the local police call on Melbourne profiler, Detective Rita Van Hassel, to help track down the killer. What Rita finds on arriving in Whitley are not the tranquil tropical waters and magical hinterland rainforest of the tourist ads for northern Queensland, but a seething hotbed of intrigue and malignant passion, where nothing is as it seems and no one can be trusted. As the murders continue, the pressure on Rita reaches boiling point, and she must muster all her profiling knowledge and ingenuity to help catch the killer before he strikes again.