Cliffs of Ochre by Donovan Hoult

Chloe, the mixed-race illegitimate daughter of a cattle baron inherits vast landholdings in the Kimberley and Pilbara regions of Western Australia. The wealth has been accumulated by her father’s criminal actions brought on by the desperation to survive which saw him dragged into a conspiracy from which there was no escape. Chloe had been brought up on Venus Downs, unacknowledged by Henry Boyce, her natural father. On the death of her father and his adopted twin sons she is suddenly party to the ongoing crime. A young lawyer, Andrew Hanna, discovers the crime and the main perpetrators, but is his client a willing participant? He falls in love with her, but she is already married to a psychopathic husband, whom she fled from in London when she abandoned her international modelling career. The central conspirator to the crime moves to gain control of her entire estate, through financial manipulation, blackmail, murder and fear. Hanna gradually unravels the identity of the criminals involved at his own peril when he establishes Chloe is not involved, but can he recover her inheritance from a hopeless financial position? As with the first novel in the trilogy, “Cliffs of Ochre” follows “The Eye of the of the Rainbow Serpent,” as a reflection of the human condition of exploitation and greed.