Based in Sydney after the Second World War, PI Cliff Hardy's work has slowed down a bit. Then he is hired by the owner of a speakers' agency as bodyguard to his client Rory O'Hara, a whistle-blower with a lot of enemies. There is also the suggestion of an inside leak in the entourage of the reformer who is doing a lecture tour by bus in numerous important cities in NSW. O'Hara is ready to spill even more beans on the corruption prevalent in the building industry and those, including several politicians, who profit from it
It sounds like an easy job, but things start to go wrong almost immediately: a woman on the tour is found dead and Cliff is out of a job. Her brother approaches him and offers him a good deal of money to find out who killed her and why. o with no other offers forthcoming, Cliff, of course, accepts.
He starts with the group of people on the tour and soon discovers there's much more here than meets the eye. His constant searching puts both he and a woman he's fallen for, in danger. As he moves across the country, he also realizes that someone is pulling a lot of strings -- but exactly who and why is what he must find out.
Silent Kill is not a difficult book to read due to the author's very simple writing style. The story takes a convoluted path but is easy to follow, and plausible, and it becomes a hybrid mystery/thriller that kept me turning pages. Although the murderer is identified before the end of part one, and that piece of the mystery is solved, there remains Hardy's other problem; who was so worried about what O'Hara might do with his recent information that they set a killer in his midst to silence him?
I recommend Silent Kill and all of Peter Corris' other Cliff Hardy books - note this is No. 39.