Kit McCarthy hasn’t seen her identical twin sister, Billie, in more than a decade. The sisters don’t see eye to eye, which is understandable, considering Kit’s a police officer and Billie followed their violent father into a life of crime.
Kit is no angel. Burnt out by years working in child protection, she has been accused of using excessive force in the arrest of a violent drunk. Kit has just been ordered to take time off work when she gets a frantic message from Billie, telling her she has a young son and that somebody is trying to kill her. And then Billie disappears.
Determined to find her estranged sister, Kit’s only lead comes after visiting their father in prison. Malcolm McCarthy claims Billie married a former US Marine and has been living with a group of sovereign citizens in the desert country of the New South Wales Riverina.
Kit’s journey to find Billie takes her through shuttered towns destroyed by drought, where everybody owns guns, nobody talks to cops, and people get lost for a reason.
Out here a war is brewing between a ruthless bikie gang and a separatist community that is re-engaging with society in the most violent way.
Kit will risk everything to find her sister and the nephew she never knew she had. But does Billie really want to be saved?
When Sydney socialite Tottie Evans is found dead at a
house in Palm Beach, Detective Holly Sutton is called in to investigate. She immediately suspects the boyfriend,a millionaire property developer and ex-mercenary soldier, who refuses to cooperate with police.
Across the city, old-school reporter John Bailey – still
haunted by the death of his girlfriend, former cop
Sharon Dexter – gets a call about a break-in. It leads to the unearthing of an old case file on a murder at the men-only Sydney Club that Dexter had been pursuing a decade earlier. Her notes reveal a link between that murder and the killing of Tottie Evans.
Suddenly, John Bailey and Holly Sutton have the same mission. And for Bailey, this is a chance to finish a job for the woman who saved his life.
The only problem: a serial killer is already serving a life sentence for the Sydney Club murder.
WINNER People's Choice Award - BAD 2024 Danger Awards
Shortlisted for the 2024 Danger Prize
Shortlisted for the 2024 Ned Kelly Awards
Someone wants Russian millionaire Dmitry Lebedev dead. After years flying under the radar in Sydney, he’s just had a narrow escape when a sex worker is poisoned in his hotel room. In desperation he contacts his former CIA case officer, Ronnie Johnson, offering to expose a traitor inside the Australian government in return for protection.
John Bailey has spent decades risking his life to break news stories. Along the way he’s made some interesting friends, including Ronnie — who saved his life in Iraq — and Scarlett Merriman, whose night with Lebedev left her in a coma. And now they both need Bailey's help.
While Bailey investigates what happened to Scarlett,
Ronnie Johnson is calling in an old debt. Because the same people going after Lebedev have framed Ronnie for murder.
Shortlisted for the 2022 Danger Prize
Shortlisted for the 2022 Ned Kelly Award
Investigative journalist John Bailey is doing his best to turn his life around after losing the woman he loved. He has a new job. He’s given up the drink. He even has a dog.
But then Federal Police raid his home with a warrant granting them unprecedented powers to take anything they want, including all his electronic devices and passwords. When Bailey protests, they threaten to put him in a prison cell.
Someone wants to stop Bailey doing what he does best – exposing the truth. He has been investigating the rise of a global white supremacist group and suspects that a notorious neo-Nazi in the United States has been directing deadly racist attacks on Sydney’s streets.
When a body of one of his key sources washes up on a nearby beach, it’s clear Bailey and anyone helping him have become targets. Bailey reaches out to a ruthless old friend – CIA veteran, Ronnie Johnson – to lure the enemy from the shadows.
Battered war correspondent John Bailey has a history of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Finally he’s living something that resembles a normal life. But all that changes when a terrorist murders a woman in front of Bailey in London.
The mastermind behind the attack is Mustafa al-Baghdadi – the terrorist leader who kidnapped and tortured Bailey in Fallujah a decade ago.
Mustafa is plotting more attacks and back in Sydney, the people who matter most to Bailey have become targets.
Bailey turns to the only man who can help – ruthless CIA veteran Ronnie Johnson – to bring down the world’s most wanted terrorist.
When a sex worker is found murdered in a luxury Sydney apartment, John Bailey is ordered to cover the story by The Journal’s editor, who can’t trust anyone else.
The former war correspondent has barely worked in years. He’s been drinking himself to sleep to fight his nightmares of being kidnapped and tortured in Iraq.
One of the dead woman’s clients, an advisor to Australia’s Defence Minister, is chief suspect in her murder and he’s on the run. He contacts Bailey claiming that he has been set up to silence him over a conspiracy linked to China that could bring down the government.
To complicate matters, the investigating police detective is the woman Bailey walked out on a decade ago. When a ruthless CIA fixer turns up, followed by a murderous Chinese agent hot on his trail, Bailey realises he has stumbled onto the story of a lifetime – one that he might not live to tell.
What people are saying
Ayliffe proves he is a master of the genre.
Sulari Gentill
Ayliffe knows his stuff... Killer Traitor Spy is a carefully crafted, propulsive thriller that sails uncomfortably close to the truth.
Michael Brissenden
This is a cracking read that blurs the line between fact and fiction. More please.
Michael Robotham
A cracking yarn told at breakneck speed. I couldn't put it down.
Chris Hammer
Sharp, gritty, sophisticated. Ayliffe's criminal world is terrifyingly real.
Candice Fox
A taut, compulsive mystery firmly grounded in real-world concerns from online misogyny to regional geopolitics … a gripping and relentless pursuit for truth and redemption.’
Dinuka McKenzie
A propulsive, sharply plotted spy thriller. Torn from the headlines and relentlessly paced.
Matthew Spencer
Sharp, incisive and scarily prescient, I was hooked from the first chapter to the final page.
Sara Foster
Bailey is charismatic, sarcastic and broken all rolled into one... a brilliantly written character starring in a cracking crime thriller.
Herald Sun
Utterly compelling and terrifyingly timely. I could not put it down.
Pip Drysdale
As a correspondent, I lived this world. Tim Ayliffe has written it.
Stan Grant
Action packed scenes... as tight as any novel from the likes of David Baldacci or Lee Child.
Glam Adelaide
Ayliffe delivers a taut, nail-biting page-turner, stamping his mark on the modern day Australian thriller.
Better Reading
If Rake were a journalist, with a talent that equals his capacity for surviving being beaten up, Bailey would be him.
Julia Baird
Tim Ayliffe delivers a ripping yarn that wraps the struggle between world powers in the clothes of a crime thriller.
Chris Uhlmann
Tim Ayliffe weaves his deep knowledge of journalism and politics into a spellbinding thriller. You won’t be able to put it down.
Michael Rowland
Who needs Jason Bourne when you can have John Bailey? You won't be able to put it down.
Chris Bath
Where you can meet Tim
BAD Sydney Crime Writers Festival
Events on Thurs Sept 11 & Fri Sept 12
Program here
Kiama Library
Fri Nov 7 6pm - in conversation with James Dunbar. Book here
