Sorted on book title (not in series order)
He got the job. Then he got the bullet.
You've seen the television series and read the stories in the papers. Now return to the books that started documenting Australia's underbelly. With their trademark forensic skills, respected journalists John Silvester and Andrew Rule bring...Read more
They couldn't shoot holes in Fred's story.
So they shot holes in Fred instead.
John Desmond "Fred" Gordon was the star prosecution witness in Operation T-Bone. He rejected police pleas to go into witness protection, punting that he could live longer on the street...Read more
An international executioner flew from California to Melbourne to kill a man he'd never met. Police have the evidence, but he will never return to Australia to stand trial. Now he sits in a cell in Vietnam facing his own execution. He could save his life if he gave evidence against the men...Read more
She had the will...he had the way.
The old lady just wanted to enjoy her last few years. The adopted son wanted to inherit her savings. He persuaded his own son to bash her to death. He got the lot and bought a yacht to sail the Pacific. His son got fifteen years.
...Read more
Lorraine Moss loved to cook... ...
her meatloaf was to die for.
No one knew what made Johnny Moss sick. The robust slaughterman was reduced to life in a wheelchair as his health failed by degrees. Friends marvelled at the way his wife stuck by her man as he faded...Read more
Reptiles killed Aubrey Broughill...but which ones?
It takes balls to become Australia's oldest stick-up man. In a 60-year criminal career Aubrey 'Grandpa Harry' Broughill had what it took, right to the end. But when his bloated body was found in a flooded quarry, his testicles...Read more
Gangsters use guns to climb out of the gutter, but often find themselves back in it, handcuffed or even dead. This is Australia's underbelly.Read more
Andrew Veniamin was a short man with a short fuse. A gunman with four scalps, he dropped in for a late lunch with his one-time idol, former heavyweight Mick Gatto, and bit off more than he could chew. The pair went into a corridor at the back of the restaurant but only Gatto walked out....Read more
Mario turned up on time. So did the hitman.
Sometimes, playing by the rules can get you killed. When lawyer-turned-gangster Mario Condello accepted a curfew in order to get bail, he knew he had to be home every night at 10 o'clock. But so did a man with a gun....Read more
With their trademark forensic skills, respected journalists John Silvester and Andrew Rule bring to life stories of gang wars and crooked cops, of crimes in high places and suffering in low, of murder, courtroom drama and political machinations, of drug lords and hitmen in crash-through-or-...Read more
Slayed in Sydney. Chris 'Rentakill' Flannery was a Melbourne gunman who sold his services to Sin City's highest bidder. He went on the missing list because he didn't realise the future belonged to those who controlled pills and powders, not pistols. A world of corrupt cops, bent politicians...Read more
'Pino' Acquaro got his big Italian funeral, but the mobsters didn't get the memo. The church was packed but nearly every gangster he knew stayed away. The handsome mafia lawyer had bungled burning down his Brunswick bar for the insurance but he had burned his bridges beyond repair. A couple...Read more
In the 1920s, Squizzy Taylor was a household name for all the wrong reasons - armed robbery, fraud, sly grog and prostitution rackets, race fixing, extortion, jury rigging and illegal gambling. Squizzy was a dandy, a bootlegger and Melbourne's most notorious criminal. From 1915 to 1927 he...Read more
First he got lucky.
Then he got life.
They called Carl Williams 'The Truth' but the truth was he was just a fat kid with a pill press and a taste for fast food, fast women and fast bucks. He got lucky the day Jason Moran shot him in the belly instead of in the...Read more
Carl Williams once liked to brag he won Australia's bloodiest underworld war because he survived when most of his rivals couldn't. Even while inside Victoria's maximum-security prison he saw the last man standing from the Moran clan gunned down outside a coffee shop in a middle class suburb...Read more
It's 1989 and the cops are on the take and the crims are on the make. They are kings of the Cross. They run the street that put the sin in Sin City. The Golden Mile. Kim Hollingsworth is a policeman's daughter who wants to follow daddy's footsteps. She's a stripper and a hooker but that's...Read more
Mokbelly: The Final Chapter of the Underbelly War or how Carl, Tony and Judy met their match.Read more
It's the story linking unsolved crimes that have taunted and haunted police and victims' families for years - four murders as dark and daring as any in Australian organised crime and a string of million-dollar heists.Read more
A dead heiress, a murdered recluse, and a slain playboy are but a few of the unfortunate victims of confounding crimes committed in the pages of Agatha Christie’s "The Under Dog and Other Stories," a superior collection of short story, mystery fiction all featuring Hercule Poirot....Read more
Think ahead five or so years from now, to an Australia transformed by the never-ending war on terror. Canberra has been wiped out in a nuclear attack. There is a permanent state of emergency. Security check-points, citizenship tests, identity cards and detention without trial have all...Read more
She was discovering loneliness. No longer living in gossiping clamour, she was enveloped by a silence relieved only by the rhythm of the surf.
A murder trial without a body, a seashore village destroyed by guilt and suspicion...Given a simple choice Alice would never have gone...Read more
In his latest investiagion, private eye Cliff Hardy comes to the aid of retired senior policeman and longtime friend, Frank Parker. Haunted by a case from his early career involving two doctors, Parker needs Hardy to uncover the truth and find out if one of the doctors, now deceased, was...Read more
If two people have a conversation heard by only those two, did the conversation actually take place? Following an alleged conversation between respected attorney Rayna Martin and teenager Christina Haynes during a boating trip at Cape Ann, Massachusetts, one of them is dead, the other...Read more
Everyone had a reason to hate the late Sir Arthur Billington-Smith. His arrogance and abrasive manner had alienated his wife, her sister, his house guests, his wayward son, even a desperate friend. Of course, his attentions to one attractive young guest in plain view of her husband simply...Read more
After five years, lawyer Hugh Gwynnes most difficult case has finally come to court. His client Tom Deacon is claiming damages for post-traumatic stress after a car accident in which he witnessed the death of his young daughter by fire. The case is going well, it seems certain Tom will win...Read more
Based on a true story…
At midnight on 28 December 1864, in the Australian gold-mining town of Daylesford, young newly-wed Maggie Stuart lies dead in her own blood. Rumour and xenophobia drive speculation over the identity of her killer, and when a suspect is apprehended, police...Read more
When the body of a middle-aged woman is found hanging from a yew tree in Stokeworthy Churchyard, the police suspect foul play. But the victim is an unlikely one. Pauline Brent was the local doctor's receptionist, respected and well liked. She seems to have no real enemies-and yet someone...Read more
Once upon a time, it is said, the devil walked in this valley...
On a snowbound February day, when Georgina first saw Furze Pen—a picturesque thatched cottage in a peaceful valley on Dartmoor—she thought it just the place to recover from the recent nightmare of her job in...Read more
A murder mystery and a social comedy by one of Australia's best-known authors. You don't usually get prizes for posthumous novels... Brooke Anderson never had a chance to finish her novel; now Rudolph is writing it for her. the brutally murdered Brooke was just one of Quill's lovers - that'...Read more
For over a decade, Donna Leon has topped European bestseller lists and captivated fans throughout the world with her series of mysteries featuring the shrewd, charismatic Commissario Guido Brunetti. Guiding us through contemporary Venice's dark undercurrents of personal politics, corruption...Read more