Ling Cooper Tang

A local jockey dies on the racecourse at Ballarat Racetrack the day after his very last win, surrounded by a bevy of nefarious characters. Complicating matters for the Doctor is that the deceased is Agnes Clasby's beloved nephew, Alexander. What had Alexander gotten himself involved in at the track? And Blake’s home life is been thrown into chaos by the arrival of Mei Lin; the wife he thought had died almost 15 years ago during the fall of Singapore...

When the wife of the winner of the first ever lottery is kidnapped and held for ransom, Blake is drawn into a world of state-sponsored gambling and tabloid newspaper reporting. Greed, envy and social mobility are the buzzwords of the new age. Meanwhile marriage is in the air for Mattie and Joe, and maybe even for Jean and Lucien. But will Blake have the time to propose before a figure from his dark past arrives?

When a young soldier is killed during a routine training exercise, Doctor Blake finds himself at the Ballarat Military Base and again facing his old nemesis Major Derek Alderton. Meanwhile, Blake is distracted by a missing persons case which is looking more like a murder. Blake soon finds the answers in a place he least expects.

Tensions have reached boiling point between Doctor Blake and Major Alderton - Blake now knows Alderton has been using Mei Lin in a psychological game of cat and mouse against him. So when Alderton is found dead at Ballarat Observatory during a once in a century eclipse, and the police learn Blake was at the scene, and fled, the hunt for the killer turns back onto Blake himself...

An investigation into what initially appears to be a routine suicide becomes personal when Cec Drury begs Blake to find out who really killed his younger brother, Rod. When it becomes clear he’s dealing with a murder, Blake's investigation uncovers an insurance scam, a second murder and a dark secret at the heart of the Ballarat fire station and it’s volunteer fire service. Meanwhile Jean may have discovered a secret about Mei Lin that will call into question everything she’s told Blake since her arrival into their lives...