ROBERT MACKLIN Dark Paradise: Norfolk Island – Isolation, Savagery, Mystery and Murder. Reviewed by Peter Corris
From convicts to mutineers to modern scandals, Robert Macklin taps the history of Norfolk Island. Robert Macklin has successfully woven together the stories of the early settlement of New South Wales, the history of the penal colony on Norfolk Island and later...The Godfather: Peter Corris on elections
The first Federal election I remember was in 1960. It was the one Robert Menzies won by one seat – the ‘Killen, you are magnificent’ election.* I couldn’t vote, being only 18 (the voting age for Federal elections was not lowered from 21 to 18 until 1973) but my...JONATHAN GRIMWOOD The Last Banquet. Reviewed by Michael Jongen
Eighteenth-century France is a feast for the senses in Jonathan Grimwood’s enjoyable romp. Set in the years leading up to the French Revolution, this is the story of Jean-Marie Charles D’Aumont, whom we first encounter eating beetles from a dung heap. His parents are...STEVEN CARROLL A World of Other People. Reviewed by Tony Bremner
The novelist reveals himself a poet in this story of love in wartime London that channels TS Eliot. Steven Carroll is a fine writer, with a Proustian ability to explore the minutiae of the instant. He loves to tell us that ‘while this is happening here, over there...The Godfather: Peter Corris on writing with Philip Nitschke
Published next week, Dr Philip Nitschke’s autobiography Damned If I Do (Melbourne University Press) represents my third attempt to collaborate with him.* Some years ago, after I’d successfully and enjoyably carried out similar exercises with Fred Hollows,...MARK O’FLYNN White Light. Reviewed by Michelle McLaren
Funny, tragic and beautifully crafted, these short stories were destined to be together. Poet, playwright and novelist, Mark O’Flynn is a man of many talents. White Light is the Blue Mountains-based writer’s inaugural collection of stories, gathering...DENNIS ALTMAN The End of the Homosexual? Reviewed by Walter Mason
In an age dominated by the idea of gay marriage, one of the founding fathers of homosexual liberation asks where Queer culture has gone. Many people have forecast the end of gay culture in recent years. Indeed, even the very word ‘gay’ seems to have become a quaint...The Godfather: Peter Corris on his favourite private eye films
My three best private eye films are as follows – in chronological order: 1 The Maltese Falcon (1941). Various stories attach to the making of this film. One, that John Huston gave Dashiell Hammett’s novel to a script assistant with the instruction to ‘just...SUSANNA FREYMARK Losing February. Reviewed by Kylie Mason
A fearless and riveting debut novel about love, obsession and redemption. Most people have someone they think of as ‘the one that got away’, the person who could have been the love of their life if only the circumstances, the timing, had been different. Maybe, years...Crime Scene: ANDREW TAYLOR The Scent of Death. Reviewed by Peter Corris
The winner of the 2013 Ellis Peters Historical Dagger Award, this impressive historical crime novel gives a hard-edged depiction of the mindlessness of war. The historical crime novel is a sub-genre and a tricky one. The writer has to satisfy, as it were, two separate...The Godfather: Peter Corris on Mythbusters
My eight-year-old grandson Vincent is a fan of the Mythbusters television show. He stays overnight with us every Saturday and introduced me to it. At first I watched just to see what so interested him but the show got me in and I began to record three or four episodes...
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