Australian fiction is the best you will ever find (and I've read everything from King to Koontz) but 99% of books from Down Under are not released here in the United States. Why? I don't know. But I DO know what I've discovered. O'Fear by Peter Corris (a Cliff Hardy mystery) is fantastic! I've hunted down more Cliff Hardy mysteries over the internet and they're all great.

Other must reads by Australian authors are:

Any book written by Robert G. Barrett! (The Stephen King of Australia)

Jon Cleary's Scobie Malone mysteries! (As good as anything written by Nelson DeMille)
Blood Junction by Caroline Carver (As good as anything written by Dean Koontz)
Every book written by Peter Doyle! (Move over John Grisham)

My fellow Americans, fight to read the books the US publishers won't let you see! You will be glad you did.

Considering that the hard-boiled private eye novel is one of the distinctly American genres, it's perhaps surprising that one of the best current practitioners of the form is the Australian Peter Corris, with his detective, Cliff Hardy. If we forgive Hardy his affection for wine, which we'll assume is a cultural deal, and a long running relationship, which fortunately never quite achieved Susan Silvermanesque proportions, he's really quite traditional. Of course, it helps that Australia isn't all that different from America, particularly in terms of its cultural heritage. Corris has written 23 Cliff Hardy books, but they are not generally available in the U. S., which is a shame.

From what I've read of them, O'Fear is a fairly representative entry in the series, which is to say, it's quite good. Hardy is hired after an old friend dies in a car accident :

'Barnes Todd has left you some money.'

'Why?'

'To find out who murdered him.'

I sat back in the chair. Sackville unhooked his glasses and set them down gently on top of the file. He massaged the bridge of his nose and tried to look grave, but there was a flicker of amusement in his eyes. It irritated me, the way a lot of small things had lately. What's so funny? I thought. I'd been in this business for nearly fifteen years. I'd found murderers before, hadn't I? Well, stumbled across a couple. 'How much money?' I said harshly.

'Ten thousand dollars. His wife's not too happy about it.'

Hardy learns that with Todd's last breath he gasped the word : "O'Fear..." He recognizes this enigmatic phrase as the beginning of the name of a notorious, but relatively harmless, scoundrel named O'Fearna, who is currently in jail, awaiting trial. His bail just happens to be $10,000.

And he's off...sexy widows, unsavory secrets, random corpses, brutal henchmen, crooked lawyers, the whole nine yards. But what makes the book a real throwback is Hardy's vulnerability :

...I had strewn the contents of my wallet across the desk. I looked at the credit cards and the meagre amount of cash and the creased driver's licence and suddenly felt small and isolated. My only backup in the office was an answering machine; my only means of transport was the Falcon; I had an illegal Colt .45 and a properly licenced Smith & Wesson .38 for firepower. No helicopters, no armoured vans, no shotguns. Who was I kidding? This was too big for me.

If Corris does not quite have the comedic chops of a Robert B. Parker or a Robert Crais, he more than compensates by restoring the dramatic tension of a hero who is truly a lone knight, who can be hurt, even killed, and who has no one he can really trust.

This is good stuff, in a classic vein. Read him, if you can the books.

GRADE : A

Peter Corris is a masterful crime writer, and Cliff Hardy, his fictional private detective is a long time favourite. Many of the stories in this collection appeared in the Australian edition of Playboy in their popular short fiction section.

Another in the long line of Clind Hardy books. Set in and around the streets of Sydney, Australia. Peter Corris does an excellent job in developing and maintaining an interesting mixture of brutalness and suspense in this story based on a whistleblower betrayed. All of Corris' novels follow the same formula, one which works, and has so for many years. If you're interested in a novel that you will not be able to put down until the end then this is it. This and others in the series are a must.

Be warned the novels themselves are quite addictive, you'll be wanting to get onto the next one straight away.

I read this book shortly after it was published. It was co-authored by one of Fred Hollows patients, Fred was a Professor of Opthalmology in Sydney. But he was more.

He started his life in New Zealand and studied Theology. He cane ot Australia and woked as a Stock-Hand and Roustabout (Cowboy), then studied medicine.

He lived a full and, unhappily, foreshortened life dying of lymphoma in his late 50s, leaving a young family. He founded the Hollows Foundation (...) which continues his work in underdeveloped areas of the world restoring sight to, by now, hundreds of thousands.

This book tells his story as only Fred could have, with no expletives deleted!

He used to say that his one aim in life was to "be considered a cabinet maker by other cabinetmakers." A humble aspiration for one of the world's special people.

Do yourself a favour - read it. I promise that you will not forget the man or his deeds, and he was a self confessed Communist to boot.

A claustrophobic novel about a turn of the century Antarctic expedition which turns into a murder investigation when one of it's members is found dead on the ice. The bulk of the novel involves discovering the victim's past and how it interconnected with the lives of the other team members. An interesting, light-weight novel with a twist at the end. Read it on a snowy weekend.

If you've read everything you can find on Sir Ernest Shackleton's trips to Antarctica, seen the traveling exhibit with Frank Hurley's extraordinary photographs and memorabilia from the Endurance, and still crave more about Antarctic expeditions, this book will keep you interested and dreaming of such exploration for a few more hours.

Written in 1978, this is a murder mystery set near the South Pole in 1909, the same year as Shackleton's first expedition and five years before the Endurance epic. A similar crew of explorer-scientists and sailors, with the same attitudes and prejudices that one finds in the literary record of the Endurance, perform similar tasks under similar conditions, with one big exception. Captain Eugene Stewart (sharing initials with Ernest Shackleton) must also investigate his own crew as he attempts to unmask the murderer of Victor Henneker, the expedition's representative of the press, who intends to record the voyage for posterity.

With the same care for historic details and period attitudes which one sees in some of Keneally's later, prize-winning books, such as Confederates and Schindler's List, Keneally reveals Henneker to be a blackmailer who holds damaging information about almost everyone in the crew, their reputations vulnerable because they have violated the inflexible moral strictures of Edwardian England. A cuckolded husband, the secret lover of a married aristocrat, a mountain guide who may be responsible for a fatal excursion, a man tried for theft, and others "guilty" of homosexuality, Zionism, illegitimacy, and heresy reflect the pettiness and rigidity of "civilized" life in England and offer motivation both for the murder of Victor and for participating in the expedition. The book's conclusion is also consistent with the mores of the day. While this may not be the greatest mystery of all time, it is certainly one in which the author has done all his homework, well worth reading for the context it provides for other (real) expeditions of the day.

This is not really a book of Antarctic exploration. Keneally uses this ploy to show us a group of 26 men who spend many months in complete isolation during arctic darkness. The men have different backgrounds and different professional specialties. An uneven lot, if there ever was one. But, of course, they completely depend on each other. They must work as a tight community - and we await Keneally's thoughts of this "experiment". He introduces Victor Henneker, a journalist who has collected unsavory facts on people he meets, including most of the members of the expedition. Henneker gets killed, and his notes now become public knowledge. How do the explorers deal with what they now know about each other? Do they look at them now with different eyes? Most important: do they still trust each other?

Keneally gives us a fascinating portrait of people under the stress of a predicament they cannot flee. A fascinating book.

Peter Corris has a good, lean, tight style. He does not rely on cheap plot devices. Unfortunately, Wet Graves is not his best, although it is more easily found in the USA than others. Try any of his other Cliff Hardy books before you try Wet Graves. Hint: you can find his other books at secondhand bookstores (Sorry, Amazon).

Wet Graves is only one of two Peter Corris novels that I have read because many of his books are out of print. The main character, Cliff Hardy private enquiry agent as they are called in "OZ" is very similar to Robert Crais's Elvis Cole. Both have a dry sense of humor and live with cats.Unfortunately Cliff does'nt have a Joe Pike to back him up. (Joe Pike types are outlawed in Australia) Mr. Corris is an excellent writer, he develops characters and his books have good plots. His writing is (IMHO) not quite up to Robert Crais level but few are.

Enjoyed this book. The newest hard-boiled detective, in the tradition of the Dashiell Hammett books. Great book for anyone who is interested in Mysteries and Australia. Takes place in the wonderful city of Sydney. Great action and adventure with a wonderful story.