On a cold Melbourne night, the body of a woman is found in a grimy, graffiti-riddled alleyway.
But the position she's found in - and the giant mural she's found beside - makes the hairs on Detective Inspector Robbie Gray's neck stand on end.
The detective is back in Chris Stuart's second novel The Glasgow Smile, which teases out the victim's possible links the civil unrest on Melbourne's streets and the secrets held by her dysfunctional family.
Robbie Gray herself has her own issues - some introduced in Chris' first novel For Reasons of Their Own - which earned her the Ngaio Marsh Best First Novel Award in 2021.
Chris likes to draw on strong social justice themes in her books - which follows on from a career as a nurse and international aid worker. In fact, it was a brush with a bomb in Sudan that kicked off her interest in writing.
Having travelled the world with her aid work, Chris has settled in Nelson, and joins Kathryn to talk about her latest novel.
Photo: Supplied
