Ben Dixon's Heart

This is the third book in the Ben Dixon series. Ben Dixon's wife,Milly, announces that she's leaving her husband and family and her apparently happy life on Wellington Springs, their Queensland cattle property, to take up a TV contract in Melbourne for three years. She's had some trials in Melbourne a few months previously when Ben was in hospital recovering from the after-effects of his shooting in the Wreck Lagoon affair.Ben, knowledgeable of TV had watched her trials and warns Milly that she will not succeed. Milly has plans for the her family to visit her but,shocked at her decision to leave, especially abandoning her nine-year-old daughter,Mim, they all refuse.Milly goes anyway and, almost immediately is the failure that Ben predicted, although putting on a brave face Distressed, she rings Ben regularly, even though he regards them as near divorce. In the midst of all this Ben is informed that his accountant has embezzled all his money and that he is bankrupt, loses his two properties and all but a house and a car. He owes more than a million dollars. He sets out to work off his debt and to care for his children. He works at various properties in the region and takes what other work he can find. Milly is unaware of this. Gradually Ben realizes that he still loves Milly and resolves to help her. He inquires further into her strange decision to leave and discovers that an oily TV executive known to him might have blackmailed Milly into going to Melbourne, using a vulnerable friend's problems as a weapon. The channel wants to revive the old Ben and Milly series that the couple had worked on years before and Ben accepts the offer to work with his wife again to try to renew their marriage and to find the executive, Byron Dietrich, and to investigate his other blackmail activities.....