The Orchard Murders

A novel about revenge, obsession, and the dangerous gullibility of religious fanatics. In 1944, in the outer-Melbourne suburb of Nunawading, a brutal triple murder heralds the return of a long-forgotten cult. A man named Anthony Prescott has declared himself the Messiah and has promised his followers immortality. There are those who believe him and who are ready to kill in his name. Inspector Titus Lambert of the Melbourne Homicide unit, whose detectives are over-stretched, requests the discreet assistance of Helen Lord and Joe Sable, once members of his unit, now private inquiry agents. The investigation is more perilous than any of them realise, and will have tragic consequences. The Orchard Murdersis the fourth novel in Robert Gott's acclaimed series, set in Melbourne during the dark days of the Second World War.

In 1944, in the outer-Melbourne suburb of Nunawading, the brutal deaths of a family herald the return of a long-forgotten cult. A man named Anthony Prescott has declared himself the Messiah, and has promised his followers immortality. There are those who believe him - and who are ready to kill in his name. Inspector Titus Lambert of the Melbourne Homicide unit, whose detectives are over-stretched, requests the discreet assistance of Helen Lord and Joe Sable: once members of his unit, now private inquiry agents. The investigation is more perilous than any of them realise, and will have tragic consequences.

Private investigator Jason Thomas "JT" Sutton, an ex-Navy SEAL, gets a tip on his cell phone about a dead body buried in an apple orchard on Highway 12. He sets out to search for the body, and is shocked at what he discovers. He embarks on an investigation that takes him from the Bayview-Hunters Point District in San Francisco to the streets of Oakland and Stockton, to San Joaquin Valley's rural orchards, to a homeless tent city, to the walls of San Quentin, and the headquarters of a powerful congressman. He confronts violent gang members, a beautiful woman, and a rival sheriff, any one of whom could be the key to solving the orchard murders.

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER A shocking exposé of the deadliest killing spree in Canadian history, and how police tragically failed its victims and survivors. As news broke of a killer rampaging across the tiny community of Portapique, Nova Scotia, late on April 18, 2020, details were oddly hard to come by. Who was the killer? Why was he not apprehended? What were police doing? How many were dead? And why was the gunman still on the loose the next morning and killing again? The RCMP was largely silent then, and continued to obscure the actions of denturist Gabriel Wortman after an officer shot and killed him at a gas station during a chance encounter. Though retired as an investigative journalist and author, Paul Palango spent much of his career reporting on Canada’s troubled national police force. Watching the RCMP stumble through the Portapique massacre, only a few hours from his Nova Scotia home, Palango knew the story behind the headlines was more complicated and damning than anyone was willing to admit. With the COVID-19 lockdown sealing off the Maritimes, no journalist in the province knew the RCMP better than Palango did. Within a month, he was back in print and on the radio, peeling away the layers of this murderous episode as only he could, and unearthing the collision of failure and malfeasance that cost a quiet community 22 innocent lives.

A shattering, utterly immersive work of investigative journalism, The Good Girls slips behind political maneuvering, caste systems and codes of honour in a village in northern India to tell the real story behind the tragic deaths of two teenage girls and an epidemic of violence against women. In the early dawn one day in 2014, a man discovered the dead bodies of 14-year-old Lalli Shakya and 16-year-old Padma Shakya hanging from a mango tree on the edge of their village in Uttar Pradesh. When the inseparable cousins hadn't returned from a walk to the fields to relieve themselves the evening before, their families had begun searching for them. Upon hearing of the discovery and reaching the bodies, the grief-stricken women of the family formed a protective shield around the tree. They knew that if their girls were taken down immediately, they would be forgotten, lost in a brutally inefficient and prejudiced system; but if media arrived, and photos of the bodies went viral, those in power could not ignore the deaths and justice would be served. Dramatic images of the Shakya girls spread across India and the world, inciting horror and despair. Padma and Lalli died two years after the Delhi bus rape, and many saw the cousins as victims of an ongoing epidemic of violence, one that was emerging in rural villages. The reality that Sonia Faleiro deftly illuminates,wrapped in pressures of caste, gender, technology and teenage desire, proves to be more complicated, and just as devastating. Intimate, mesmerizing, based on years of meticulous reportage, The Good Girls uncovers the heartbreaking truth of what happened that night through the voices of the girls' families, those who saw them last and the legal and medical officials who touched the case.

The peaceful atmosphere of the Reverend Mother’s annual retreat is shattered by sudden, violent death in this gripping historical mystery. 1920s. Cork, Ireland. The Reverend Mother regrets the bishop’s decision to invite the five candidates for the position of Alderman of the City Council to join them for their annual retreat. Constantly accosted by ambitious, would-be politicians hoping to secure the bishop’s backing, she’s finding the week-long sojourn at the convent of the Sisters of Charity anything but peaceful. What she doesn’t expect to encounter however is sudden, violent death. When a body is discovered in the convent’s apple orchard cemetery, blown to pieces by a makeshift bomb, it is assumed the IRA are responsible. But does the killer lie closer to home? Was one of the candidates so desperate to win the election they turned to murder? Does someone have a hidden agenda? Once again, the Reverend Mother must call on her renowned investigative skills to unearth the shocking truth.

When Anna Lister’s father is one of five people who die mysteriously at Packart’s Orchard in 1990, she is devastated. After the deaths, the orchard, owned by a respected family and a main source of employment in the small town of Windsmill, BC, struggles to find workers and falls into disrepair. In 2012, Albert Packart has finally found a good man to take over the daily operations—but tragedy strikes again. Twenty-three years after her father was taken from her, Anna's husband Jack dies at the orchard under strange circumstances, and she knows in her heart that the deaths are connected. Something or someone at the orchard is killing people, and she's determined to find the answers. When the local police won’t take her suspicions seriously, Anna hires a private investigator, and together they begin to unravel a fifty-year-old deadly secret.

May 1973, Minneapolis florist Bob Nachtsheim was murdered by shotgun blast. The assailant left behind an overturned flat of orchids and a spreading pool of blood. Twin Cities media dubbed it the Orchid Murder, but the crime was never solved. Years later, Norm Wartnick, Nachtsheim's former employer, found himself sued by the victim's widow. His attorney made egregious errors in Wartnick's defense, and in 1986 Wartnick heard a jury declare him responsible for the wrongful death of Nachtsheim. The three-million-dollar civil judgment against the hard-working family man forced him to sell his family business and branded him a murderer. Jerry Snider and Joe Friedberg, two of Minnesota's top trial attorneys, were incensed by Wartnick's plight. Knowing they would battle enormous peer pressure and even greater odds, Snider and Friedberg placed their careers on the line in a six-year struggle against a judicial system determined to justify an attorney's betrayal of his client. In 2007, Ray decided he wanted his story told by someone he could talk with eye-to-eye. Delving into Ray's story, Snider and Friedberg's passionate pursuit of justice was understandable, for also involved were two families: the Nachtsheims and the Wartnicks-one splintered by bitter greed, the other strengthened through adversity. The Orchid Murder, for the first time, tells of Snider and Friedberg's determination to resolve a life-destroying judgment against an innocent man, and how one family's belief in each other and in the truth preserved hope during desperate times.