The ink stain / Meg and Tom Keneally.

Henry Hallward, editor of the Sydney Chronicle, is a thorn in the side of the colonial administration. Hallward has been imprisoned several times for criminal libel, and continues to edit his newspaper while incarcerated. This time, he's in jail awaiting trial for suggesting that there have been some criminal financial dealings involving the CEO of the Australian Agricultural Company, a consortium of British landowners, to whom the British government was giving a million acres of Australian land to develop. As he is being taken from Sydney jail to the courthouse, a shot is heard from a nearby building, and he falls dead to the ground. Monsarrat and Mrs Mulrooney are sent to Sydney, officially to assist in the investigation, unofficially to discover what they can about the story Hallward was working on.