Sam Rhys is still haunted by one of his cases - the brutal rape and murder of a little girl - when he was a homicide detective in San Francisco years ago. Her killer left her twisted in a pathetic pose of a damaged doll.

The crime scene was so horrific that seasoned investigators couldn’t bear to look at her body unless they imagined her a mangled mannequin, not a real flesh-and-blood little girl. Sam and his partner Mike Patrick became obsessed with finding the killer, and when the case ran cold - completely cold - both men experienced a personal crisis.

Sam’s failure to capture the murderer led him to give up police work and follow his best friend Alex Rosen to Australia and to a new life as a college professor in Perth. But when a newspaper article about the killing of a little aborigine girl in Broome - a city in Northwestern Australia - catches Sam’s eye, his gut is certain that the killer from all those years ago in San Francisco is back in his sights.

Sam’s hunt is an incredible odyssey through the cities and peoples of Western Australia as he tracks a vicious killer from one victim to another.

Sandgroper Desecrations by Herbert Hocking is the first in a series of mysteries featuring Sam Rhys and is set in the memorable vistas of Western Australia. Sam’s next Australian mystery is chronicled in Sandgroper Pyramid.