I wonder who that red-headed bloke is? He’s come into town out of nowhere, flattened six of the best fighters in Yurriki plus the biggest man in the valley. Then he arrives at my dance in an army uniform drinking French champagne and imported beer like it’s going out of style. And ups and leaves with the best young sort in the joint ... Don’t know who he is. But he’s not bloody bad.
Les thought they were going to be the easiest two weeks of his life. Playing minder for a young member of the Royal Family called Peregrine Normanhurst III sounded like a deadset snack. So what if he was a millionaire Hooray Henry and his godfather was the Attorney General of Australia? Les would keep Peregrine out of trouble ... So what if he was on the run from the IRA? They’d never follow him to Australia . . .
The Godson moves at breakneck speed from the corridors of power in Canberra to the grimy tenements of Belfast, to climax in a nerve-shattering, blood-spattered shootout on a survivalist fortress in the Tweed Valley. The Godson features Les Norton at his hilarious best, whatever he’s up against – giant inbreds, earth mothers, jealous husbands, Scandinavian au pair girls, violent thugs and vengeful terrorists.
If you thought Australia’s favourite son could get up to some outrageous capers in his previous adventures, until you’ve read The Godson, you ain’t read nothin’ yet!
Robert G. Barrett
Between the Devlin and the Deep Blue Seas
Okay, so it looks like the Kelly Club is finally closing down – it had to happen sooner or later. And it isn’t as if Les Norton will starve. He has money snookered away, he owns his house, and his blue-chip investment – a block of flats in Randwick – must be worth a fortune by now. Except that the place is falling down, the council is reclaiming the land, there’s been a murder in Flat 5, and the tenants are the biggest bunch of misfits since the Manson Family. And that’s just the good news, because the longer Les owns the Blues Seas Apartments, the more money he loses.
This time Les Norton’s really up against it.
But whilst he’s trying to solve his financial problems, he still has time to fight hate-crazed roadies, sort out a drug deal after fighting a gang of bikies, help a feminist Balmain writer with some research she won’t forget in a hurry, and get involved with Franulka, super-sexy leadsinger of an all-girl rock band, The Heathen Harlots.
And with the help of two ex-Romanian Securitate explosive experts, he might even be able to sort out his investment.
But can Les pull off the perfect crime? Of course – and why not throw the street party of the year at the same time?
Robert G. Barrett
Davo’s Little Something
All easy-going butcher Bob Davis wanted after his divorce was to get on with his job, have a few beers with his mates and be left alone. But this was Sydney in the early eighties. The beginning of the AIDS epidemic, street gangs, gay bashings, murders.
When a gang of skinheads bashed Davo’s old school friend to death simply because he was gay, and left Davo almost dead in an intensive care unit, they unleashed a crazed killer onto the city streets. Before the summer had ended, over thirty corpses had turned up in the morgue, leaving two bewildered detectives to find out where they were coming from.
Robert G. Barrett’s latest book is not for the squeamish. Although written with lashings of black humour the action is chillingly brutal – a story of a serial killer bent on avenging himself on the street tribes of Sydney.
Robert G. Barrett
White Shoes, White Lines and Blackie
All Norton wanted was a quiet coffee and Sacher cake at the Hakoah Club in Bondi, and to be left alone to sort out his troubled love life. How he let notorious conman Kelvin Kramer talk him up to Surfers Paradise for five days, Les will never know. Supposedly to mind KK and his massively boobed girlfriend, American model Crystal Linx, in Australia to promote her latest record. Though it did seem like a good idea at the time. Apart from the President of the United States arriving and Norton’s domestic problems, there wasn’t much keeping him in Sydney.
Norton went to the Gold Coast expecting some easy graft in the sun, an earn and possibly a little fresh romance. Les definitely got the earn. He certainly got the girl. But what Norton mainly got in Surfers Paradise was trouble. In a size 40 Double-D cup.
Robert G. Barrett And De Fun Don’t Done
They don’t call him Lucky Les for nothing. A ticket in a raffle and Norton was off to the US of A – Siestasota, Florida, where it turned out hot, red hot, and it wasn’t just the weather.
Night club brawls, mafia hitmen, too many girls called Lori, gun crazed Americans and the whole lot washed along in a sea of margaritas. Even for Les Norton it was just too hot to handle.
So it was off to ‘greener’ pastures – the Caribbean – for reggae, rum and Rastafarians, not to mention Sultry Delta, sweet-lipped Esme, and Millwood Downie, schoolteacher, historian and would-be stand-up comic, who helps Les trace his family tree and possibly uncover the biggest earn ever.
The world is finally Norton’s oyster. All he has to do is get the shell open.
You Wouldn't Be Dead for Quids Page 28