For crime fiction fans of Dervla McTiernan and Jane Harper comes an outback police procedural where gold fever takes a deadly turn.

In the middle of the night in a remote part of Western Australia's goldfields, the thud of a mallet on a marker peg sets off a chain reaction that unearths secrets long buried.

Detective Jessy Parkin - sent to policing purgatory in the aftermath of a tainted investigation - is tasked with finding Max Cochrane, a veteran prospector who has vanished into thin air.

What begins with a concerned daughter's plea for help soon burgeons into a mystery as shapeshifting as a desert mirage.

Fortunes are being built on the back of Kalgoorlie's coveted gold, but the truth might be the rarest find of all.