Book Review - The Dying Trade by Peter Corris

 The Dying Trade by Peter Corris

Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2012 (first published 1980)     ISBN 9781921922176

I'm not a huge consumer of crime fiction, but every now and then I have an itch I need to scratch. I have never read any Peter Corris before this book (the first of his Cliff Hardy series) but I will certainly be reading more in the future. I can see why Corris has been crowned the unofficial King of Australian crime literature, and why he went on to write another 41 books featuring the rumpled, hard-drinking army veteran Cliff Hardy.

The Dying Trade is a suitably convoluted story about illegitimate children, blackmail, and money. While the plot is a page-turner and keeps the reader on their toes, in many ways it's not the most important part of the book. Corris has written a piece of "Sydney noir", where we have all the ingredients of the style, except set in a sunny harbourside city. The juxtaposition of the hard-bitten detective genre with wonderful harbour views and expensive restaurants makes this book a little different from other books of this type.

Hardy is smart and world-weary, but no so much that he doesn't make mistakes, get beaten up, or expose his vulnerabilities to women. He's a man who has seen some active service, has lost a wife, regrets not having children and drinks white wine with soda at breakfast time. He is also a man who knows how to use a library to get ahead, which I found particularly endearing.

I can't vouch for the rest of the series, but The Dying Trade contained no gangsters, no criminal masterminds and no massive plots to destabilize the World: just a nice refreshing PI investigation that led to unexpected places.

Those few people who read my reviews would remember that during COVID I read Peter Temple's Jack Irish series. I now see where he got his inspiration. I think I prefer the source to the simmer.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell