Help me find this 90s Australian science fiction novel?
December 18, 2024 5:13 PM   Subscribe

Can you help me find the author and title of a science fiction detective novel from somewhere around '95-'97, set in the authoritarian city-state of Sydney after a nuclear exchange which decimated the northern hemisphere?

The recent passing of John Marsden prompted me to go find a book I remember that I *thought* he'd written, but about which I think I was mistaken.

It's a detective novel centered around solving a series of murders, and set in the city-state of Sydney decades after a nuclear war. It involves some degree of pre-war tech, a Danish fence who was stranded in Australia after the war, a possibly mute genetically-enhanced and remotely activated sleeper agent who comes to protect a destitute young woman, and some degree of the city council starting to open up to the world again. It would have come out within a couple of years either side of Sean Williams' 'Metal Fatigue' but is is most definitely *not* that book. The general theme is the gradual receding of nuclear winter and the slow thawing of hope for the future.

I recall it not being the world's most amazing novel, but I picked it up in paperback around the same time I first bought 'Fallout' in it's big landscape box with the flip-up lid maybe early in '98, and I think that helped the novel leave a few hooks in me, and I'd like to go back and have another skim through it.
posted by MarchHare to Media & Arts (1 answer total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
Response by poster: Never mind - something over lunch shook the name of a character loose and that helped me find the book. It was 'Winter' by Simon Brown. There's a 'Winter' by John Marsden that floods the results, leading to my initial uncertainty. Now to find an epub, as it's no longer in print and there are no copies through Libby.
posted by MarchHare at 6:12 PM on December 18, 2024 [5 favorites]


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