There is a man in Hobart named George Denakis.
He is in his mid-seventies. He has been practising property law in Tasmania for most of his adult life. He wears a newsboy cap and is weathered. He is not, at first glance, a remarkable man.
At second glance, he is one of the most interesting people in this series.
For many years, George has been the sole legal representative for an anonymous client whose identity he protects with rigour, and whose instructions he carries out with a care and thoroughness that goes well beyond the requirements of his retainer. His client is distributing properties across Bitterport, Tasmania. Not selling them, giving them away. To individuals who have been researched and selected for reasons that are not always obvious.
Each transfer comes with conditions. The recipients cannot sell for a specified period. Some have additional requirements to renovate, preserve, or investigate. Nobody in Bitterport quite knows who is behind the transfers, or why, or what the endgame is.
George knows. And he’s not telling.
This alone would make him interesting. But George Denakis has a personal reason for his investment in Bitterport’s history. One that goes back generations, to a woman who died in 1945 under circumstances that have never been explained.
George never met his grandmother. He knows her story through fragments: a name, a date, a family whisper that eventually became silence. He has spent a lifetime trying to piece together what really happened to Elvira Brown.
He is getting closer to the truth.
I love George. In a story populated by people doing their best in difficult circumstances, he is the one doing it most reliably. He carries his grief with dignity, executes his client’s wishes with integrity, nurses a private heartbreak that he does not impose on anyone else.
He deserves to find what he’s looking for.
Whether he does is a story for the books.
Murder at Millmerran House releases 26 June. Cover reveal coming soon.
Raven.
Raven Corbin 