ABOUT
THE BOOK

January 1900, and Australia’s tropical north just got a little hotter.
An outbreak of plague is suspected, and the Queensland government sends Dr. Alfred Jefferis Turner – small, refined and immaculately dressed – to assess the situation. Turner, armed with a microscope, a butterfly net and his lovelorn yet devout colleague, Dr. Linford Row, is met with incredulity, not least by local councillors who insist its only typhoid. Fifty-two possible plague carriers – including two prominent MPs – are isolated in a dilapidated quarantine station on Magnetic Island. Meanwhile, in town, the sewers overflow, the streets choke with rubbish; and still no one wants to listen.
When Dr. Row delivers a letter from one of the quarantined men to his hauntingly beautiful wife, he ensnares both himself and the eccentric Dr. Turner in a hotbed of small-town scandal and fear.