Perth, 1981.
Brothel madam Destiny Purcell controlled half the city's vice trade—until someone executed her on a golf course in the rain.
The police blame a junkie. Case closed.
For fans of Snowtown, James Ellroy, and Underbelly, BANG! delivers brutal Australian noir where corrupt cops, motorcycle clubs, and a desperate young killer collide in 1980s Perth—Australia's most isolated city, with its own rules and its own justice.
But in a city where the Purple Circle controls everything from shadows, where motorcycle clubs enforce for the powerful, and where sin is managed—not outlawed—nothing is ever that simple.
Someone wanted her dead. The wrong man took the fall.
Rain washes away evidence. It doesn't wash away guilt.
Bang!, Taliyah Stone
The website of author Taliyah Stone has an interesting byline:
Australian crime fiction based on real events from the 1980s underworld. Written by an anonymous author with insider knowledge.
BANG! is the first entrant in a trilogy to be followed up by DIRTY! (to be released 3rd July, 2026) and TAKEN! (to be released late 2026).
Set in the early 1980's in Perth, Western Australia, the opening novella (125 or so pages) tells the story of the murder of brothel madam Destiny Purcell. Shot at the wheel of her car, on a golf course in Perth, it was a wet and dismal sort of a night, and the only evidence that could be gleaned was a single image of an unidentifiable man on a pushbike near the scene at the right time.
Meanwhile the city is controlled by a shadowy group of influential men known as the Purple Circle, who use motorcycle clubs as enforcers, and managed sin as a controlling factor, it all comes down to money and power.
Told in a noir styled tone, in a series of short sharp chapters, BANG! packs quite a bit into a small space. The intricacies of the Purple Circle and the bikies, and the influence that they assert, and the people who they control are well fleshed out, as is the existence of the shadowy killer, who eventually outs himself, after the wrong man takes the blame for the killing of Destiny Purcell. Along the way other people get hurt, lives spiral out of control and the money and power stay exactly where the Circle wants it.
The tone here is pretty spot on, although there were a few points where a bit of the repetition did detract slightly from the pace, and noir stylings. Given the shortness of the work, there's enough character exposition to give the reader a handle on who was who in this story, and the evil at the heart of it all.
I'm more than a bit of a fan of fiction with a dark, black heart though, and BANG! certainly gave this reader a chance to contemplate the worst of human nature.