by NRB | 6 Aug 2019 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
See you at the Toxteth: The best of Cliff Hardy and Corris on crime, published this week, brings together in one volume some of Peter Corris’s best short stories, selected by Jean Bedford, together with his ‘ABC of Crime Writing’ and a selection of...
by NRB | 28 Sep 2018 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
Peter Corris, the ‘Godfather of Australian crime fiction’, died in his sleep on 30 August 2018. His Godfather columns have been part of the Newtown Review of Books from the beginning, and we feel his loss keenly. Following are some tributes that were given at his...
by NRB | 9 Feb 2018 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
A good number of authors who’ve employed series characters have written what are called in the business retrospectives – that is, stories that hark back to earlier events in their characters’ careers. John le Carré did so with Smiley’s People (1979), tracing previous...
by NRB | 14 Sep 2017 | Crime Scene |
Clear observations and easy rhythms continue to give momentum in this final novel by Peter Corris. Halfway through The Dying Trade by Peter Corris, Cliff Hardy is under a tarp in the back of a Landrover taking stock: ‘I’d been careless and slow and the thought...
by NRB | 1 Sep 2017 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
As an undergraduate I wrote self-regarding verses (I can’t dignify them as poems), which I submitted to student magazine editors who rightly rejected them. As a postgraduate I tried writing short stories. They were derivative of Hemingway and Maugham and were also...
by NRB | 30 Jun 2017 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
I was scheduled to appear at the Sydney Writers Festival on 27 May. I was keen to do this because it’d be my swansong, my final book having been published in January, and also because I’d be ‘in conversation’ with actor, journalist and author Graeme Blundell. I’ve...
by NRB | 21 Apr 2017 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
I’ve lately taken to playing patience – the one-handed card game known in the US and Canada as solitaire. With no skill at cards, this, along with Snap, is a game I can handle. But, as well as luck it does require vigilance, and for me, with poor eyesight and no...
by NRB | 31 Mar 2017 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
‘Where do your ideas come from?’ is a question often put to authors, especially crime writers. When I was busy at the trade I tended to fob it off with answers about my imagination and picking up on things I’d overheard when I was a journalist or listened...
by NRB | 27 Jan 2017 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
I got a phone call from my agent. This was unusual. Usually she emails me along these lines: ‘Dear Peter (we like to observe the formalities. ‘I’ve just processed a royalty from a set of your e-books. I’m sorry it’s so little but …’ I’ll reply thanking her and telling...
by NRB | 13 Jan 2017 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
With Win, Lose or Draw from Allen & Unwin published on 3 January this year, I have produced my last book. Early reviews and notices suggest that it is in no way inferior to the 41 others in the Hardy series. So why stop? Certainly not because I tired of writing...
by NRB | 2 Sep 2016 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
In 2006 Robert Drewe, whose books – like A Cry in the Jungle Bar (1979), The Bodysurfers (1983) and The Shark Net (2000) – I admire, edited a collection of stories entitled The Penguin Book of the Beach. I wasn’t a contributor but I could have been because beaches...
by NRB | 12 Aug 2016 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
Our decision to move from Melbourne to Sydney early in 1976 seemed impulsive to some but it was not ill-considered. While Melbourne might have been the Mecca for theatre and music, Sydney seemed to be the place for fiction writing and journalism. Moorhouse, Wilding...
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