Private investigator Cliff Hardy tackles one of his most difficult cases yet in this gripping detective novel that finds him in the far southwestern suburbs of Sydney. When a journalist hires him to find Billie Merchant, a woman with incriminating information about media-giant Joanas Clement and ...
Cliff Hardy is your typical down on his luck private eye; a broke womaniser who gets bopped on the head more often than is good for him and down those dangerous streets he must walk alone. Only in his case those dangerous streets are Sydney, in the early 1980s. Australia's very own Sam Spade crea...
Aussie private eye Cliff Hardy narrowly escapes a fireball that kills two lovers and lands him on the trail of deception that leads to a hell guarded by a snarling dog and filled with a family's darkest secrets. Reprint.
A growing number of old men are suspiciously dying one by one, and P.I. Cliff Hardy soon pieces together the one thing they each have in common--the Sydney Harbor Bridge. The troubled waters beneath the city's bridge have become a serial killer's battle ground, and Hardy must decipher the motive ...
Moxley offered to take MacKay and others to the places where he held up Dorothy Denzel and Frank Wilkinson, to point out where the vehicles were situated and to show them the house at Moorebank where he allegedly left them unharmed. Moxley thought this would help him. He said that it had been rai...
You know what I mean.’ I did know what he meant, but sometimes I just can’t help being flippant. Sometimes too, it helps to give me a handle on what sort of a person I’m dealing with. Flippant back is one thing, serious and impatient is another. Martin Price was serious. He’d phoned mentioning th...
‘Why not?’ ‘I don’t want him to know I’m onto him. I have to think what to do.’ We were approaching Narrabeen in moderate traffic. The lightness of the traffic had helped me spot the tail. An off-white 4WD. That, and the fact that the driver wasn’t first class at the job. The 4WD stayed well back...
Since then he’d had his picture in the papers. I hadn’t. I knew him but there was no reason to think that he’d know me. Anonymity is an asset in my game, and I was careful to preserve it. I took a quiet sip of the beer and surveyed Catchpole’s companions. Ray Guthrie wasn’...
For one reason or another, many of the cops I used to know have left the force and the new breed seems more interested in computer spreadsheets and printouts than in clocking faces. There seemed to be more women on the premises than I remembered from my last visit and several Asian faces. Some of...
She was happy to see me go. As she ushered me out I wondered how she spent her time. I didn’t see any books where books might have been. Getting herself tricked out must have taken time but not all day. I had a sense that her life was as empty as her house. I had to hope my manner didn’t cause he...
It would take no time at all to trace Brain back to the pub and to me. It was an hour’s work for a smart cop or even a dumb one. The question was, when would Brain’s body be found? If the Palmer Street house was full of alcoholics he mightn’t be missed until Saturday morning—there were probably o...
Dunlop protested for form's sake but was secretly relieved. This expedition was going to cost enough as it was, and possibly cause awkward questions from the accounts people. He hung back discreetly, finding something to talk to the doorman about, and allowed Ava and Bushmill to precede him. They...
I drove back to Glebe with the slip of paper on which I’d written the midnight contact number in my jacket pocket. I kept feeling the paper as I drove, wishing it was something more substantial, wishing that I was causing things to happen instead of being Grey’s representative in Mountain’s game....
Angela was facing some serious maintenance problems. She opened the door to me, ushered me in without speaking, knocked on Sarah’s door as we went past and continued through to the sunroom. She was wearing jeans, rubber boots and a faded denim shirt. She picked up a straw hat and a can of insect ...
The room keys aren’t complicated and, with a bunch of people who don’t know each other circulating about, things don’t get noticed. Whoever had been in my room hadn’t tried to conceal the fact; quite the opposite. Lying on top of Lord Jim was a disc of silver foil about the size of a ten-cent pie...
Perkins put the beer on the kitchen table and let out a long breath. ‘Thanks, Carl,’ he said. ‘Okay, Mr Perkins. What now?’ ‘I’m not sure.’ I felt a hand move down my spine and then the gun was pulled from its holster. ‘Carrying a gun,’ Carl said. &...
The first time it happened to me was in the army, when a hand-to-hand-combat instructor did it by accident. A Japanese tough guy did it again somewhat later and not by accident. The recovery has a sense of unreality about it—a feeling of what the hell happened?—and then there’s a very stiff neck ...
Probably meant she’d have a cut-rate lawyer along. She took me at my word and set the meeting for the mid-afternoon of the same day. All this came through Munro, so I didn’t even get to hear her voice and he hung up as soon as the meeting was set. I arrived early as usual ...
I side-stepped to make him move the gun and I jumped forward fast while he was doing it. I kicked at his right knee and swung a short, hard punch at the inside of his right forearm. I connected with both; he crumpled and yelled; the gun flew from his hand and skidded across the tattered carpet. I...
There was a thick film of dust over everything—furniture, books, crockery, glassware. The place looked as if it had been left suddenly, one busy morning maybe, and had never been returned to. The covers on the double bed in the larger of the two bedrooms had been quickly pulled up. A single bed i...
‘What’s the name of your task force?’ Chang smiled. ‘It’s a serious investigative unit, so it doesn’t have a silly name. The people we’re interested in launder drug and extortion money by buying boats, insuring them, scuppering them and collecting the insurance. Then they collect on the salvage. ...
‘Hardy.’ ‘This is Tess Hewitt, Cliff. I’m sorry about what happened the other night. I over-reacted.’ ‘It’s okay, Tess. I’m glad you called. I didn’t mean to upset you but this bloody business I’m in requires it sometimes. Anyway, what’s new?’ ‘Well, you were right. Bill Damelian didn’t have any ...
I looked out of the window across the rusting roofs of Glebe. The sky had a dull, leaden look—the day was going to be hot. A Sahara wind was already whipping the ice-cream wrappers and other crap along the gutters. I made coffee but it was bitter and I swilled it down the sink. About the only goo...