This time is an unfair part of the year for picking my Book of the Month. When confronted with Gentill, Disher, Rankin, Galbraith and more, somehow I’m supposed to make a decision? Of course, like you, dear reader, I’m just going to gather all the November titles into a big pile of happiness, hug them to my chest and make no plans for the next few weekends. And along with those delicious favourites, why not dig into a debut novel, set in Melbourne’s west and introducing a main character with an arresting personality (and an excellent surname, if I do say so myself) in social worker Stella Hardy?

Hardy is called to a client’s house early one morning, finding a family in mourning over the death of teenager Adut Chol. She does all she can to ease their grief, until a discussion with the dead boy’s brother, Mabor, leads to a discovery that stops her in her tracks – her home address in Adut’s notebooks. Stella knows this can only mean he knows about the one thing Stella can’t forgive herself for. As she tries to find out how much Adut knew, her friendly new neighbour goes missing, her errant brother returns to insinuate himself in her life, a handsome artist asks for her number, Mabor makes some godawful friends, and the next thing she knows she is being escorted by limousine to luxurious apartments to chat with high-profile business moguls connected to shifty mining practices. All of this without her old pal, cop Phuong Nguyen, to help her out – unless they both decide to let go of the past and take hold of the future with a touch of make-up breaking-and-entering.

Stella is wonderfully likeable – determined but as easily sidetracked as the rest of us, be it by the internet (guilty) or handsome artists (also guilty). She is sometimes hopeful and sometimes bitter about the world, her friends, and her family; as an outsider everywhere, she is full of scathing remarks about people but willing to be called out on it. This is a powerhouse debut, full of excitement, jokes, brutality and scenic flights over Australia’s dangerous red centre, and the very bad use of very good money.

Fiona Hardy blogs about Crime Fiction at readingkills.com and puts together the Dead Write column for the Readings Monthly newsletter.