Books like Bony and the mouse by Arthur William Upfield

A psychopath's killings converge with organized-crime efforts to wipe out a crooked financier before he talks in this taut, suspenseful addition to the series featuring Australia's detective-inspector Scobie Malone. Recent murders in and around Sydney display a common thread: two decades earlier, the victims, then police cadets, had been instrumental in the expulsion of another cadet, Frank Blizzard. The remaining members of the group are Malone, opera singer Sebastian Waldorf and Brian Boru O'Brien, a shady character under pressure from mobsters and crooked politicians for whom he has laundered money. O'Brien, who is having a secret affair with the prime minister's wife, narrowly misses an underworld hit man's bullet. While Malone and his colleagues launch a search for Blizzard, missing for years, the three potential victims develop a strange friendship and undergo changes in personality and life goals.

Charles exchanged a glance with Oliver. A ship full of cats? That sounded even worse than pirates. One minute, Charles and Oliver are peacefully nibbling lunch inside a barrel, and the next they've been loaded onto a ship of pirate sea dogs. Worse still, they overhear the pirates making plans to steal the Queen's gold. Charles is determined to help rescue the treasure. But what can the bravest of mice do? Especially when the Queen's sailors are all cats? - Back cover.

In October two young girls set out for a walk in the Grampian Mountains of Australia. They are never seen again, and the policeman who is sent to investigate is murdered. Now it is March, and Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte attempts to solve the mystery.

A homicide detective in Sydney teams with a cold‑efficient partner and her brother to solve a gruesome harbor‑borne serial murder that echoes their own scarred pasts.