It’s Reggie da Costa here, senior crime reporter for Melbourne’s premier newspaper, The Argus. Just excuse me for a moment while I trim my moustache and smooth some Brilliantine through my thick black hair. (Pause.) That’s perfect.

Why aren’t I serving in the Australian forces fighting in Western France, you might ask, rather than dressing for dinner? With my socialist leanings, I saw through the propaganda surrounding this Great War (although what’s ‘great’ about it, I’ll never know). It’s an economic war, you should understand, waged by politicians who misled a younger generation into enlisting by appealing to their patriotism. Anyway, I don’t look good in khaki.

How did I get into this crime reporter caper? My father, Mario da Costa, violin-playing philanderer and scoundrel, left Mother when I was thirteen, running off with the maid and leaving us destitute. Forced to take a job, I chose the role of office boy at The Argus, and clawed my way up through the ranks, due to my innate intelligence, my way with words and the acquisition of a reporter’s most important asset: his circle of contacts. My links to the underworld, the coroner’s office and the police have allowed me to access information that is not publicly available, which keeps me ahead of the press pack.

Today is a perfect example of that. I’ve just come from the Duke of Wellington Hotel, where I’ve been lubricating Detective Sergeant Clary Blain’s tonsils with multiple glasses of good Scotch. He’s told me in confidence that three death masks have been found in the cellar of a derelict mansion. It seems there’s a killer on the loose, one who makes plaster casts of the lovely young ladies he dispatches. In what can only be described as my talent for being in the right place at the right time, I have secured an invitation to dine with the two witnesses to this bizarre discovery. This may be the biggest story of the year, hopefully consigning the War to a small paragraph on page five.

I have dressed with care. My suit tonight is a triumph in tailoring: an impeccably-cut linen suit from Wallace, Buck and Goodes of Queens Walk, set off by a high-collared cream shirt with a round club collar, and a fashionably wide polka dot tie. Outside is parked my 1917 Dodge Roadster, a two-seater automobile with wooden steering wheel, immaculate black paintwork and shiny large headlamps. Classy yet flashy, just like me. Perhaps this evening, among the dinner guests, there will be the elusive future wife of my dreams, one who can restore Mother and me to our rightful place amongst the upper classes, using her money and social status. And, if Dame Fortune is smiling down on me, perhaps she will provide me with the story that will cement my reputation as the premier crime reporter in Australia.

The Death Mask Murders, A Reggie da Costa Mystery #1
Genre: Cozy with an edge
Release: June 2021
Purchase Link

‘Death is just a close shave away.’

There’s a killer on the loose whose modus operandi involves shaving the heads of young women, strangling them and creating a gruesome memento of each in the form of a death mask.

It is February 1918. A wild storm lashes the Melbourne bayside suburb of Brighton. Emma Hart, an aspiring artist, and Max Rushforth, an ex-soldier suffering from shell shock, seek shelter in a cellar, where they discover the killer’s sinister collection of death masks, made from murdered women.

When Max is arrested as a suspect in the Death Mask Murders, Emma enlists the help of crime reporter, Reggie da Costa, to prove Max’s innocence.

Meet the author
Laraine Stephens was born and raised in the bayside suburbs of Melbourne, Australia. With an Arts degree from the University of Melbourne, a Diploma of Education and a Graduate Diploma in Librarianship, she worked in secondary schools as a Head of Library. On retirement, Laraine turned her hand to the craft of crime writing. Her debut novel, The Death Mask Murders, is set in Melbourne in 1918. It is the first in the Reggie da Costa Mysteries series. Laraine lives in Beaumaris. Visit her at larainestephens.com and on Facebook. 

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