Appeal Denied: A Cliff Hardy Novel

by Peter Corris

  Hardy’s search takes him from the Illawarra escarpment to Wollongong and Port Kembla, and the police are far from co-operative as he tries to unravel the truth. He has his hands full when a panic-stricken call leads to a second case—the search for the precocious daughter of Marisha Karatsky, an exotic, dark-eyed interpreter who gets well and truly under Hardy’s guard.

  Hardy has narrow escapes and people die as his probing hits nerves. Corrupt cops, compromised insurance agents, feral bikies as well as a few good guys are drawn into the maelstrom. Hardy battles on through personal turmoil and vicious opposition with all outcomes uncertain and justice a remote ideal.

  ‘Hardy has seen off many imitators and lives to drive his beloved Falcon another day.’

  The Sunday Age

  A Cliff Hardy novel by Peter Corris

  The Empty Beach

  The early 1980s found Cliff Hardy well established as a private investigator but still battling his demons. He has quit smoking and moderated his drinking. The memory of his brief marriage still haunts him along with other ghosts from his past.

  A case in Bondi attracts him as an ex-surfer and admirer of the suburb. It began as a routine investigation into a supposed drowning, but Hardy soon finds himself literally fighting for his life in the murky, violent underworld of Bondi.

  The truth about John Singer, black marketeer and poker machine king is out there somewhere—amidst the drug addicts, prostitutes and alcoholics. Hardy’s job is to stay alive long enough in that world of easy death to get to the truth.

  The truth hurts …

  ‘There has been no more efficient, entertaining and amusing writer of detective thrillers in Australia than Peter Corris.’

  The Age

  ‘A fine, tightly controlled story.’

  West Australian

  A Cliff Hardy novel by Peter Corris

  Saving Billie

  When journalist Louise Kramer hires Cliff Hardy to find Billie Marchant, Hardy heads for the unfamiliar territory of the far southwestern suburbs of Sydney. Billie claims to have information about media big-wheel Jonas Clement— the subject of an incriminating expose by Kramer. Clement doesn’t want Billie found and Clement’s enemies want to find her first.

  Hardy tracks Billie down, but ‘saving Billie’ means not only rescuing her, it means saving her from herself. Billie, ex-stripper, sometime hooker and druggie, is a handful. Hardy gets help from members of the Pacific Islander community and others, but the enemies close in and he is soon fighting on several different fronts.

  Clement and his chief rival, Barclay Greaves, have heavies in the field, and Hardy has to negotiate his way through their divided loyalties. Some negotiations involve cunning but others involve guns. The action takes place against the backdrop of the Federal election campaign, and all outcomes are uncertain.

  ‘I don’t know how many Cliff Hardy novels there are, but there aren’t enough.’

  Kerry Greenwood, Sydney Morning Herald

  ‘Hardy is a wonderful creation still, under Corris’s magisterial narrative control, capable of those odd echoes and resonances, the elegiac interludes that characterise the best crime writing.’

  Graeme Blundell, Weekend Australian