The Last Helpdesk Ticket

When a senior ICT worker is found dead in the basement server room of the Royal Brisbane Theatre, everyone is ready to call it a tragic technical accident. The alarms failed, the network crashed, and the victim had been working late. Convenient, really. Detective Senior Sergeant Stephen "Steve" Kearney has spent too many years in homicide to trust anything that convenient.

With Detective Sergeant Mia Chen beside him, Steve follows the case through the theatre's polished foyers, backstage corridors, loading docks, server rooms, dressing-room passages, and forgotten storage spaces. Beneath the glamour of opening night lies a workplace held together by old systems, shared passwords, nervous loyalties, and secrets no one wants restored from backup.

The dead man had been migrating old helpdesk records. What he found may connect missing data, altered reports, contractor invoices, access logs, and a buried incident the theatre would rather leave in the dark. Every suspect has something to hide. Not every lie is murder.

Dark, atmospheric, and dryly funny, The Last Helpdesk Ticket is a grounded Australian detective mystery for adult readers who enjoy patient investigations, flawed suspects, institutional secrets, and clues that reward close attention. Steve Kearney is weary, observant, humane, and quietly cynical-the sort of detective who solves cases by listening, waiting, and noticing what people are trying very hard not to say.

Step inside the Royal Brisbane Theatre, where the show must go on, the systems remember, and the final ticket may be the one that exposes everything.