A Fatal Tide is a powerful novel that's part murder mystery and part coming-of-age- story, as two young men - one white and one black - discover the limits of humanity amid the horrors of war.
It is 1915, and Thomas Clare and his best friend Snow go to war to solve the murder of his father. Led across the world and into the depths of war by just two clues – a hidden wartime document and the imprint of an army boot on the victim’s face – the pair embark upon a journey ridden with danger.
Finding himself in a world in which murder is the norm, Thomas has to learn quickly who he can and cannot trust. With not only the Turkish troops bearing down on the Anzac lines, but also the cold-blooded killer of his father in his own trench, Thomas learns that questions about the past of everyone he meets will be the key to his own survival.
For, unknown to Thomas, the path to murder began thirteen years earlier in Africa with the execution of Breaker Morant - and a secret that could change the course of history...
A Fatal Tide, published by Bantam, Random House Australia, August 2014.