Australia is blessed with some of the very best crime writers in the world right now, and Dervla McTiernan is without a doubt one of the finest. Her debut, The Rúin, was a global bestseller that won a host of awards when it was released in 2018, and she’s gone on to make a name for herself as one of the most consistent and compelling writers in the contemporary crime genre. McTiernan’s most recent book is a standalone novel, and it’s one of her best. Not so much a whodunnit, or even a howdunnit, What Happened to Nina? is a nail-biting suspense thriller about whether money and privilege is enough to buy a guilty person an ‘innocent’ verdict.

Nina Fraser is a devoted sister, a conscientious daughter, a loyal friend, and a loving girlfriend; Nina Fraser is a bitch, an unreliable worker, a risk-taking addict, and an unfaithful lover. Whichever version you believe, one thing is certain: Nina Fraser is gone. When Nina’s boyfriend Simon is implicated in her disappearance, his influential parents go into overdrive, using expensive lawyers and an unscrupulous PR firm to initiate a vicious media campaign to discredit Nina’s family and cast doubt on Simon’s guilt. As the police attempt to wade through the quagmire of disinformation, Nina’s family realise that to find the answers they need, they might have to start breaking some rules of their own.

I tore through What Happened to Nina? at a rate of knots: alternately on the edge of my seat with anxiety, burning with injustice, and desperate to know how the story of Nina’s disappearance could possibly be resolved. For a crime novel with no red herrings, no twists, and no huge reveals, it’s an electrifying read about what happens when a case is tried in the court of public opinion.