When a king tide at a lonely beach exposed the body of a victim who had had his identity altered prior to an execution-style killing, the traditional Tasmanian calm was shattered.
Fortunately for Tasmanian readers and 40°South the hard-bitten Detective Inspector Franz Heineken was already here. Heineken, aka ‘Pufferfish’, is a tough, unglamorous cop with a rusted on appreciation of the ironical. More Dalziel than Pascoe, Pufferfish has seen it all – from being implicated in a murder in his native Netherlands – to bringing to justice many a criminal who made the mistake of under-estimating his ability to think like one of them.
Pufferfish is a cop’s cop. He has scant regard for theoreticians, administrators or desk jockeys. Having made his home in Tasmania he has a very short fuse when it comes to dealing with the low life who reduce the time he is able to spend at his shack on Bruny Island.

No Weather for a Burial is the fifth in the Pufferfish series by master crime fiction writer, David Owen. He has assembled a cast of colour-ful characters. The villains seem somehow more menacing and more vicious with the backdrop of the wilderness and the normally peaceful streets of Tasmania. As the plot unfolds deep in the famous World Heritage Area Pufferfish is confronted by a ‘deadly choice’. To bail up a pair of psychopathic killers he must place his own mates at risk.
Other titles in the Pufferfish series are:
Pig’s Head
A Second Hand
X and Y
The Devil Taker
Owen will be releasing the next Pufferfish novel in 2011.

—Bert Hanson