Tributes to 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...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on retrospectives
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...
PETER CORRIS Win, Lose or Draw. Reviewed by Tom Patterson
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...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on the short story story
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...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on his swansong
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...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on playing patience
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...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on where ideas come from
‘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...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on his El Dorado
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...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on writing his final book
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...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on the beach
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...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on moving north
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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