Australian Crime Fiction Database

Emma Tom writes every week for The Australian. Her first novel, Deadset won the regional Commonwealth Writers prize for Best First Book. She has also published a book of non-fiction articles titled Babewatch. She lectures in media at the University of Technology, and lives in Sydney.

Evidence : A teenage boy is set alight and burnt to death. His fourteen-year-old neighbour, Cheryl Jane Kiss, is determined to find out who is responsible.

But like the beautiful sunsets reflected in the town's sewage treatment works, nothing in Tantanoula is quite what it seems. Cheryl's celebrity mother has more than a few secrets of her own...if only she could remember them...Cheryl's stepfather, Jackson Kiss, aids her education by leaving adult magazines under her mattress. And as for Cheryl's friends - what friends?

Evidence is the story of Cheryl Kiss and her attempts to bring a killer to justice while simultaneously crash dieting, kissing the town's trail bike hero and hoping no-one will find out about The Frigid Test. It is a story about a real life girl detective who discovers that asking the questions is much easier than living with the answers.

Fast-paced, passionate, hilarious, hectic, and deeply moving, Evidence is the dark side of life on the fringes in Australia.