The Scarecrow Killer — Margaret Murphy

A body swinging in the trees. A mysterious hit and run. Detective Cassie Rowan tackles the most disturbing case of her career.Just before dawn on a clear October morning. Detective Cassie Rowan is driving home, exhausted, after a gruelling night on duty. Her headlights catch a sudden flash of movement by the side of the road, a streak of bright, metallic blue. Cassie pulls over to take a look. For a moment, she thinks she imagined it: a body swaying among the trees - hanging from a branch.Cassie scrambles up the slope, already dialling emergency services. And stops short. The macabre sight that greets her is not what she expected at all . . .A week later, there's a fatal accident on the same stretch of road. Seventeen-year-old Damian Novak mown down in a hit-and-run. No witnesses.Something about Damian's death doesn't add up. Cassie is convinced that the hit-and-run and her mysterious swinging body are connected.Cassie discovers that Damian isn't the first local teenager to have died in strange circumstances . . . and he won't be the last.In each case, a sinister effigy of the victim appears a week before their death.Cassie is in a race against time to track down a brutal killer before they kill again.