Book Review - White Meat by Peter Corris

 White Meat by Peter Corris

New York: Fawcett Gold Medal, 1986 (first published 1981)    ISBN 0449130274

Well, I'm officially hooked on Cliff Hardy - after reading the first, third and fourth books in the series, I just had to find the second book to fill in the gaps in Hardy's developing milieu... I couldn't get my hands on a copy anywhere, but the good old Internet Archive helped out where no-one else could - they are worth your support. Ironic that I had to read an American edition on an American site, but that's the way of the world in 2023.

White Meat is another tangled affair that sees Hardy enmeshed in the worlds of boxing, drugs, and Aboriginal Sydney. After being hired to find his local bookie's daughter, who has gone missing, Hardy finds himself deep in Redfern trying to track her down. The trail leads to rural New South Wales, where he realises that the girl in question (Noni) is in on her own kidnapping. There is also the question of the missing bank heist money, just who is the kidnapper's real father, and why so many people want to use Noni for their own ends.

Of the four Hardy novels I've read so far, this is the weakest in terms of style. There are too many clunky bits of writing that are trying too hard for the grunge/noir style that Corris is aiming at. Perhaps he tried to cram too much into this particular narrative container. The twists in the plot sometimes led me to backtrack just to make sure I knew what was going on, and the ending was a bit of a let-down.

That stated, White Meat was a page-turner, and hasn't put me off continuing what is rapidly turning out to be a summer of Hardy.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell