NE Advertiser

Vol. 104, No. 31, Wednesday, August 29, 2012

BOOK REVIEW

New Thriller from Local Author

FREYCINET, a murder mystery set in the well known Tasmanian national park, is the first novel by Melanie Calvert.

Ms Calvert was born in Launceston and grew up in Scottsdale.  She is the daughter of Ted and Phyllis Calvert.

The novel was inspired by events surrounding the unsolved 1993 disappearance of 26-year-old German backpacker Nancy Grunwaldt, and the 1995 brutal murder of 20-year-old Italian tourist, Victoria Cafasso.

The main character of the novel, Ginny O’Byrne, arrives at Freycinet National Park with her fiance Julian, only to be haunted by a series of clairvoyant visions of two young murdered women.

The next morning two young women are missing.  Within 24 hours, Ginny is part of a massive search and rescue mission, surrounded by people who may in fact be responsible for the murder of the missing women, tormented by her gruesome visions, and embroiled in an eerie atmosphere that is becoming increasingly threatening.

“Freycinet contains all the things that I find fascinating about Tasmania; its beauty, its dramatic scenery, its essential, inherent danger.  I wanted the novel to be like Picnic at Hanging Rock or Twin Peaks with that same sense of atmospheric horror,” the author said.

“And I couldn’t fail to reference the terrible, unresolved vanishing of Nancy Grunwaldt, or the horrific murder of Victoria Cafasso and the image of her tragic ghost, calling from among the reeds.”

Freycinet is currently available at the Scottsdale Information Centre and other good bookshops.  It is also available online from Amazon, Booktopia, the Book Depository and Ebay.