Balmain, once the industrial, blue-collar engine room of Sydney, is being transformed. The older locals are being squeezed out by the cashed-up developers and hungry young professionals keen for a town house near the city. Water views add value ... but are they worth killing for?

Enter Nicola Sharpe, a twenty-nine-year-old private investigator. She's lived in Balmain all her life and is worried about what's happening in her suburb. 

When a friend of her father's suspects major union fraud then disappears, and a local resident suffers repeated threats and vandalism, Nicola realises that something is very, very wrong. On Cockatoo Island, an evil secret is about to surface.

Dry Dock is the first Catherine Cole book featuring PI Nicola Sharpe.

Reviews

Much of Dry Dock is a homage to 'old' Balmain, for which PI Nicola Sharpe remains intensely loyal and  nostalgic. Remembrance of days gone by remains a constant theme throughout the novel, and the suburb at the centre of Dry Dock is little different from dozens of others in cities and towns around Australia. .. a highly entertaining and well-sustained novel from a newcomer.

- Stuart Coupe, The Sydney Morning Herald

Cathy Cole has a great feeling for those generically imperative, often painful, telling moments. Dry Dock is a classy piece of realism about seedy social conditions, union amalgamation, corruption, murder and hubris in Sydney's Balmain, where the broom of gentrification has swept the jobs away. ..Cole possesses a voice that is wry and self-deprecating, but you feel that her fury and melancholy, too, are only just under control and, that like her 29-year-old investigator Nicola Sharpe, appealingly balanced between certainty and uncertainty.

- Graeme Blundell, The Australian

How refreshing to read a novel that deals with up-to-the-minute issues, complete with contemporary street, hotel, cafe, bar and personality references, and all wrapped up in the mantle of a thriller ... Written with clarity and pace, this is a fine first novel that also laments the loss of suburban values.

- Matt Condon, The Sun Herald

Cathy Cole has an extensive knowledge of her subject, her knowledge of the union movement and her characters are well drawn. The pace is fast throughout and the network of friendships is plausible, giving a sense of warmth and reality to the book. A rivetting read.

- Beryl Tope, Sisters in Crime

Street by street, park by park, Balmain emerges as accurately and vividly as a page from a street directory.

- Cathy Netherwood, The Point

Cole writes well. The tone and pace are assured. There's bound to be a sequel as rumour has it - Dry Dock has already sold out in Sydney. Try reading it with a map of Balmain next to you, or better still take the walking tour. Its all there - including pubs where one can glimpse the old union types who no doubt inspired some of the characters. This is a consummate study in localism.

- Sue Turnbull, Sisters in Crime

For Peter Temple, Marele Day, Peter Corris and Cathy Cole, the detective offers a link to a disappearing working-class, egalitarian Australia.

- Peter Hutchings, The Sydney Morning Herald