We first encountered Detective Sergeant Stephen Minter as a minor character in Steven Carroll’s Goodnight, Vivienne, Goodnight. In that novel, Minter was introduced as the antithesis of a DS in the 1940s – intelligent, well read, and empathetic, he was the son of Austrian Jews who had escaped to England before the war; his parents were detained during the war as enemy aliens and tragically died while interned. Nobody seemed to care about their fate. Minter was a great character and Carroll liked him, too, and so gave him his own book in Death of a Foreign Gentleman. Now, he reappears in The Afterlife of Harry Playford.

When Minter sees a poster advertising an idyllic Australia and assisted passage, he and his partner Brigid take the plunge and emigrate. Arriving in Australia, they both land jobs in the sleepy seaside town of Queenscliff, he as a detective sergeant and Bridget as an advisor to Australia’s somewhat compromised intelligence services. Australia, or rather, Queenscliff, isn’t quite the solution they’d thought it would be. It’s a small, parochial town, closed and insular – and maybe the whole country is, too. Gazing out across the Rip, Brigid asks, ‘What are we doing here?’, but they are stuck for the time being. Brigid with her work and Minter due to the discovery on the beach of men’s clothes – neatly folded, expensive, and with no identifying contents or marks. The next morning, the identity of the owner is revealed as Harry Playford, a senior minister in the federal government. Urbane, successful and popular, he’s been touted as the man most likely to succeed Bob Menzies.

Minter is told not to worry; Playford is known for disappearing occasionally and will turn up. Yet as he digs deeper, another Playford comes to light, one different from his public persona, and Minter senses that something’s not quite right about the obvious answer – Playford went for a swim, got into trouble, and drowned.

When Brigid, through her spy contacts, learns about some of Playford’s sympathies and activities before the war, she (and, indirectly, Minter) is warned off and told to keep quiet. Slowly, Playford’s secrets are revealed. Will they help Minter solve the mystery? We’ll see. I’ve become a great fan of Stephen Minter, and I think you will too.