On Christmas Day, a seventy year old widow's body is discovered inside a bin in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney, Australia. Despite an intensive investigation, the police fail to unearth a motive or identify a suspect. Lacking any clues, the police file it as a cold case.

A half century earlier the Third Reich ramps up its offensive to arrest and deport to the East the Nazi regime's undesirables. As part of the sweep, a young girl is arrested along with her parents. They are placed in a box car and forced to endure a harrowing train journey to Auschwitz. On arrival she is separated from her parents and suffers years of punishing labour, near-starvation and daily horrors.

She was liberated five years later by the Russians. Vindicated by her survival she sets out to find the one person she blames for her ordeal in Auschwitz. Is that the clue that the police missed in trying to solve the crime?

The Madness Locker is an exceptional and teasing story about history, contingency, the dignity of humans and fragility of our hold on earth. You will not easily forget these women Tom Keneally, author of Schindlers Ark

Gripping and powerful. The Madness Locker is not merely a great debut novelIt is a great novel period.! John Lescroart. The New York Times bestselling author