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Valverde Maclean

Life and love can take us to unexpected places


The Hinterland Times, Maleny

 December, 2015


You may remember Bryan Hughes, and his “Postcards from La Charente” published last year in HT.  This year Bryan has a great holiday read suggestion: a romantic mystery, from a surprising quarter.


A Bryan Hughes Review


There must be something in the air up here in the Hinterland. Something that brings out the creative literary genii that seems to reside in so many hearts.


Valverde Maclean’s background is that of a New South Wales wheat and sheep farmer who foresaw the emerging opportunity of the live cattle export market from the NT. He and his wife, Meg, sold up down South to purchase a rundown cattle run outside of Katherine and turn it around.


This did take several years of very hard work and not some little risk.  About 13 years back Stuart and Meg sold up and moved to Montville.


Now let me say that the author is a very good friend of mine…but…that he would morph from farmer to author came as a total surprise. Over a BBQ and a glass of red he mentioned that he was writing a book.


“Yep, I can see it, you’re going to tell us all about your grand adventures on the land, about sheep and cattle and kangaroos…how very exciting!” I said with some little note of scepticism.


“Nope, oh you of little faith, it’s a romantic mystery and I’ve been working on it for two years”, he replied on a note of satisfaction.


“I’ve called it “The Disappearance of Merry”.  A young woman disappeared; her brother was killed in a car crash on the same weekend. It’s an old mystery. Many years later, my heroine Suzie, a former friend of the woman, is drawn back to solve the mystery of her disappearance.”

Read the Review in Fulli