Like last April’s Daughters of Eve by Nina D Campbell, Mali’s Waugh’s debut Judgement Day contains a strong female lead as well as strong themes of family violence. Detective Jillian Basset is the first senior detective I’ve encountered struggling with both postpartum and an alpha male at work (who is threatening to take over her job). One odd thing stands out in her new case: why kill Judge Kaye Bailey, the fiercely determined yet empathetic family court judge, just hours after her appointment to the position of chief justice, and on the eve of a major judgement? More to the point for readers: whodunnit? The story unfolds slowly, but at a satisfying pace, leaving you just enough pages to figure out the murderer for yourself.

I really enjoyed this book: it’s a welcome distraction from the outback noir releases of late. Mali Waugh is a newcomer to the crime genre (or as my dear colleague prefers to call them, ‘burglar books’ – he also refers to cookbooks as ‘books about dinner’) but you wouldn’t know it. Her writing is accomplished and refreshingly urban. Being immersed in the hustle and bustle of Melbourne’s Hoddle Grid, and among bizarre, self-absorbed personalities was interesting. We don’t often see legal crime novels from Australian writers. Normally the sub-genre is dominated by John Grisham, so it’s nice have an antipodean perspective and character study as part of the canon.

What’s also great about this book is that it sucks readers into accepting stereotypes about its central characters only to have you silently apologise in subsequent chapters. For the detectives involved, the resolution does not eventuate quickly, but for readers it is pretty satisfying, as is seeing the collegiality and trust evolve between the two protagonists as they gradually unburden themselves of their issues. If this is the start of a new series, I’m very much looking forward to the next instalment.