‘DI Challis and his sergeant Ellen Destry…are both deftly, yet complexly drawn characters: two of the best in the genre and Disher easily one of the best writers.’

‘With so many exhibitionist forensic experts showing off their extraordinary skills, it’s a rare pleasure to sit down to a traditional detective story in which solid police work solves a crime. Inspector Hal Challis is very much in charge of the operations in an excellent Australian series written by Garry Disher…There are no shootouts here. Just the drama of people from very different social classes locked in battle over the schools, the services, the beaches, the views–and a way of life that has already gone behind a cloud.’

‘You’ll enjoy the journey and an ending that’s far more believable than so many modern murder mysteries.’

‘Disher is a fine writer about place and also people. Challis, in all his testiness and kindness, is a carefully crafted senior policeman…As in all the best police series, there’s continuity and change…Go Garry, Go!’

‘Disher’s sixth Challis murder-mystery emerges as a beguiling, multi-faceted tale.’

‘There is no shortage of blood, but Disher has a light touch that adds wry amusement to the predicaments his characters create for themselves. Disher proves you don’t have to be a tourist to enjoy the delights of the peninsula.’

‘In all, this is a world-class police novel and Disher continues to be one of our best and most consistent crime novelists. Highly Recommended.' 

‘Disher’s layered plotlines, peppered with familiar Mornington Peninsula references, make this an engaging yet unsettling read.’

‘This is classic Disher, the taut writing bringing a complex plot into as sharp relief as the vivid settings and dread-laden atmosphere do the fully rounded characters.' 

‘This very fine novel submits to the thriller conventions but with an easy freedom that makes it seem as if Disher made the rules himself…A compulsive and unsettling novel that should win Disher many new readers.’

‘Disher works like a biographer, calmly attempting to assemble order in his characters’ chaotic lives. Disher cares about their interlinked worlds as much as he does about labyrinth plots, fetishised violence and the showy brainwork of his coppers. As always this grand master propels us methodically yet elegiacally. But he doesn’t just provide classy entertainment. His fiction is a kind of social barometer of prevailing tensions in the community, especially in the outlying badlands of Australia’s provincial coastal towns.‘  

‘Now he’s back with the sixth book of a first-rate police procedural series featuring the perennially tired DI Hal Challis and his feisty offsider Sergeant Ellen Destry…Whispering Death is the most complex and intriguing book of the lot and close to the best thing Disher’s yet written.’

‘The sixth in the Challis and Destry series is unmissable. If you haven’t heard of them, reading this will have you backtracking.'