The Slipping Place is an unconventional murder mystery set in Hobart.
“an engaging plot set within astutely observed social strata in Hobart”
Robyn Walton, The Australian
“I willingly followed Baker as she skilfully leads me away from the actual killer and entangles me in a web of deceit and half-truths. … haunting.”
Carol Seeley, Reading Writing and Riesling
“In all my work I am fascinated by the nature of mystery itself, the place of the unknown in everyday life, the way we struggle and fail to understand the world, each other and even ourselves. In The Slipping Place, neither the detective figure, Veronica, nor eventually the murderer, can articulate clearly why they are acting the way they do
Joanna Baker
From the back cover blurb:
Treen’s eyes looked dark, even the whites, as if all the black colour, all the bruising, had leaked through into the eyeballs.
‘What’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen?’
Veronica Cruikshank’s son, Roland, is her idealistic one — affectionate, creative, vague, a fighter of lost causes. And he is her vulnerable one. The one who is never safe.
So when she hears he is back in Hobart, trying to help an old school friend, Treen McShane, Veronica is deeply worried.
Roland will not meet with her. She learns about him in distant glimpses and second-hand reports. She hears vague stories, of violence and horrific abuse.
Then Roland sends a text, asking Veronica to go to the Slipping Place, an old family picnic spot on the mountain. There she finds Treen’s frozen body.
Roland will be implicated in Treen’s death. If Veronica is to help him, she has to find out what really happened. She begins looking into the girl’s life, and the true nature of her connection to Roland and his old friend Paul. Soon she makes a discovery that will bring the violence right inside her own family circle.
The Slipping Place is about lies, secrets and unspeakable cruelty. It is about mothers and sons, unconditional love and bonds of blood. It is about the things we thought we knew and the things we miss.
And it is about a choice, a decision point, that is infinitely, vanishingly, terrifyingly small.
Riparian 