Kate Cocks was born in Moonta, South Australia, was in kinship care as a child, and later worked for the South Australian State Children’s Department at the Edwardstown Industrial School.

In 1915, she became South Australia’s first woman police office and was the first policewoman in the British Empire to receive the same salary as male police officers.

What Anderson does in The Death of Dora Black is tell the story of Kate Cocks while she imagines Cocks on the beat solving a crime.

The result is a charming “cosy murder mystery” in which 42-year-old Kate Cocks and her assertive junior, 27-year-old Constable Ethel Bromley, set out to explain the murder of Dora Black whose body has been found on the beach at Glenelg.