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See You at the Toxteth

Page 28

by Peter Corris


  The audacity of this idea is matched by the brilliance, breadth and depth of the language; the range of reference; the subtlety of ideas encompassing such matters as climate change, nuclear annihilation, sexual politics and much more. There are passages—such as the foetus’s awareness of sensations when his mother’s lover is fucking her; his concern for the effect on him on another occasion when she swallows sperm; and when he attempts suicide by strangulation by the umbilical cord—that shocked me in a way I didn’t think genre writing could do.

  This, inescapably, is the craft of writing and the power of the imagination working together at high intensity to create something challenging and new (to me, anyway—I could never get through more than a few pages of Tristram Shandy): literature.

  Graham Greene clearly thought there was a difference between his two sorts of writing, designating some of his novels as ‘entertainments’. I’d be happy to resort to one of my favourite authors, Somerset Maugham, to sum up. Maugham described himself as being at the very front of the second rank. It’s all just writing when all’s said and done, and perhaps the leading genre writers such as James Ellroy, Val McDermid, Bernard Cornwell, Rose Tremain, Adrian McKinty and Ursula Le Guin should be assigned an honourable place at the very front of the second rank.

  ON RETROSPECTIVES

  9 February 2018

  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 strands in his main characters’ professional and personal lives, and again in A Legacy of Spies (2017), which is essentially a memoir by Peter Guillam, one of Smiley’s colleagues in the secret service.

  Ian Rankin has done the same with John Rebus. I did it twice, with Matrimonial Causes (1993) and That Empty Feeling (2016).

  The 2016 book, my second-last, gave me the welcome chance to write about my interest in boxing. I don’t remember much about the earlier book except that Cliff Hardy’s then girlfriend asked him to tell her about an early case, which he did. I was pleased with myself for coining the term ‘box Brownie and bed sheets’ in describing the activities of private detectives in that benighted time. I cannibalised a short story to produce the novel, a procedure for which Raymond Chandler was notorious. I have to admit that neither of the two retrospectives were as popular as the standard here-and-now books, perhaps partly because people didn’t want to be reminded of the old divorce laws and partly because of the widespread hostility to boxing.

  A recent book by Michael Connelly, Two Kinds of Truth (2017), provides an interesting further example. Connelly is a bold writer who takes risks. Not only has he brought in characters from other books—Mickey Haller from The Lincoln Lawyer (2005) has teamed with Connelly’s main man Harry Bosch in several books (this has been done before, by Tony Hillerman with Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn, and Ian Rankin with Rebus and Malcolm Fox)—but in a dangerous bit of postmodernism Connelly goes so far as to mention the film of The Lincoln Lawyer, and he runs his contemporary story parallel with his retrospective case, giving them more or less equal emotional and narrative weight. This is a first as far as I know.

  One of the appeals of the standard here-and-now double-plot novel is the tension set up between the two strands. Will the two stories come together and if so, how? This adds to the reader’s interest. Inevitably they do.

  In the case of Two Kinds of Truth, the stories were so disparate—one a thirty-year-old case involving legal manoeuvres and the other an intensely contemporary matter concerning opium addiction and the Russian mafia—that it was difficult to see how they could fuse. This was constantly on my mind as I listened to the audio version. They did fuse in a highly dramatic fashion to my complete satisfaction.

  I found a couple of the recent Bosch novels a bit below par but this one delivers the goods. Not that it smells of the lamp, but an immense amount of research must have gone into its substance and considerable craft into its construction. To my mind, although I don’t know the entire field (who could?), Connelly is the prince of American crime writers.

  ON HIS SWANSONG

  30 June 2017

  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 known Graeme for many years, from our Melbourne days. He is an aficionado of crime fiction who has reviewed a number of my books favourably and we’d done a similar gig successfully once before.

  But by the time of the session I was in hospital with a cast on my leg. Could I do it in a wheelchair? I decided I could—with more than a little help from my friends.

  The day arrived and a first-class nurse from the hospital, a Nepalese man named AJ, helped me to dress and compose myself in the wheelchair and trundled me out to the wheelchair taxi. If you’ve never been in one of these vehicles, try to keep it that way. I imagine it’s something like being locked in a Black Maria. (Are there still Black Marias?) The chair is bolted in, you are strapped in, and the windows are so small and high up that all you can see are roofs and the tops of trees.

  At the Hickson Street wharf the driver alerted Allen & Unwin publicist Andy Palmer, and he appeared to detach me from the taxi and take me to the Green Room. I was early; I got a glass of wine, chatted to Andy about our long association, and Jean, Patrick Gallagher (the head honcho of Allen & Unwin), and Blundell turned up. Then it was off to the venue, the Loft.

  I was concerned about the setting. Given the wheelchair, would we have to do it on a level with the audience? Not ideal. No problem—there was a device to lift the chair up to the level of the stage. I would’ve preferred this be done with the audience in place for the dramatic effect, but this was apparently not the way. Up I was put, and I was in the wheelchair, miked up, a glass of water and Blundell beside me, as the audience came in. Given my poor vision I couldn’t tell how big the auditorium was but I was told it was mostly full.

  Graeme opened by inviting me to explain my condition. I told them I had had a blackout in the kitchen and that the stove, the sink and the fridge had hit me as I fell. This got a good laugh and sympathy.

  Jean had advised me not to play the whole session for laughs as I sometimes did, and I obliged. Under Graeme’s astute questioning I spoke about how I tried to create realistic characters with realistic problems, plausible plots and a social and political texture to work with the necessary sex and violence—to execute the popular-fiction writer’s craft, in other words.

  I did make jokes, particularly about Shane Maloney, whom I accused of cutting deeply into my audience as well as being more widely translated than me. Blundell picked up on this and told how, when overseas somewhere, he’d mentioned that he was an Australian writer, and someone had asked, ‘Oh, are you Shane Maloney?’

  ‘Thanks for that story, Graeme,’ I said. ‘You’ve made my day.’

  The session went well, with some good questions from the audience. One in particular I chewed over. I was asked if I missed Cliff Hardy as a sort of partner. I said I didn’t, not really, but perhaps a bit. I certainly missed chances to use his voice, to comment on things I heard and saw now that I could no longer write.

  I was winched back down and signed about thirty books—a gratifying result in these hard times. Then it was back into the hands of Andy Palmer, my minder, and once again into the Black Maria after saying goodbye to Jean and others.

  I was met at the hospital by Doug, another top-notch nurse, who wheeled me back to my room, heated up the dinner waiting for me and completed some injecting and pill administration. And so to bed, after a good event only made possible by willing helpers. Cliff Hardy himself could hardly have asked for better.

  ON THE NEDDIES

  13 October 2017

  I was recently honoured by
the Australian Crime Writers Association with an award commending me for my long career as a writer in the genre. Michael Robotham, himself deservedly a past winner of Best Fiction awards,4 spoke of my work in a way that touched me deeply. I’ve previously won several other awards from the Association and when I told a friend, a Scotsman, about the Ned Kelly award—nicknamed a Neddy—he was astonished that we should name our awards after a criminal.

  ‘We don’t regard him solely as a criminal,’ I said. ‘Given extenuating circumstances and statements he made, we regard him as at least partly a rebel.’

  ‘He was a murderer,’ he said.

  I explained that, prior to the events at Stringybark Creek where three policemen were killed, Ned’s only offences had been for assaulting police and for horse stealing.

  He interrupted, ‘That was a hanging offence.’

  ‘Not in Australia,’ I said. ‘He served three years in gaol for it. The second offence against the police, committed under extreme provocation, was more serious. It was then that the gang went into hiding and were posted as outlaws with rewards for their capture.’

  ‘They murdered three coppers.’

  I told him that, despite the gang not being posted as dead-or-alive fugitives at that stage, there is evidence that the police party that went after them were a semi-vigilante group who carried equipment designed to strap dead bodies to horses.

  ‘So in one sense the gang acted in self-defence,’ I said.

  He remained sceptical but I’d outlined the circumstances that caused contemporaries and later generations to take a more favourable view of the Kellys. The authorities were provocative, heavy-handed and oppressive towards hard-scrabble settlers, many of whom, like the Kelly brothers, were descendants of convicts.

  Nevertheless, it remains curious that we name our awards as we do. The United States has no Jessies (I’m thinking of Jesse James) and Britain no Ronnies (as in Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs). Well, who cares? Let them have their Gold and Silver Daggers and their Edgars. We’re different and I’ve never heard of anyone refusing a Neddy on the sort of grounds my friend raised. I’m proud of mine—all of which in some way represent Ned’s armour, painted indelibly into our consciousness by Sidney Nolan. And besides, my maternal grandmother’s maiden name was Kelly and it was my mother’s middle name.

  Footnote: Another past Neddy winner I’d like to name is Patrick Gallagher, the publisher at Allen & Unwin, who published most of my Cliff Hardy books as well as many by other local crime writers. The recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002, Patrick has been in no small measure responsible for the popularity and marketability of the genre in Australia today.

  ____________________

  4 This year’s winner, with a twopeat (as we say in footy), was Adrian McKinty for Police at the Station and They Don’t Look Friendly.

  ON WRITING HIS FINAL BOOK

  13 January 2017

  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 forty-one others in the Hardy series. So why stop?

  Certainly not because I tired of writing about Cliff Hardy. I have immensely enjoyed the time I spent with each book—feeling out the characters, allowing the plot to develop (I never pre-planned a story) and having the freedom to comment through the fiction on life and death, sex and sport, the city I love and places I’ve been. I admit that the books have taken me longer to write recently, say two to three months, rather than a month and a half as in the past, but this was because I had less to do—my other novel series having come to an end. But it was also because I wanted to extend the pleasure of putting Cliff through his paces—having fun, getting things off my chest.

  When I was in my thirties my eyesight was threatened as a result of long-term type 1 diabetes. The argon laser (introduced to this country by Fred Hollows, whose autobiography I was later to co-write) saved my sight. And I wrote many books over the following years.

  A few years ago my eyesight deteriorated as a result of the scars from the lasering thickening and cutting down the area of retina I had to work with. My response to this, with nothing corrective to be done, was to write in a bigger font on the computer. Starting perhaps three or four books back I began to write in 18 point. This piece I am now writing in 36 point!

  My eyesight deteriorated still further after I finished the manuscript of Win, Lose or Draw to the extent that it became difficult for me to manage on the computer—to use the spell checker, to access certain functions, even to locate the cursor. The effort it would take to write a novel under these conditions would be exhausting and the pleasure would be nil.

  It has been suggested that I could dictate, as many writers have done, or use voice-recognition software, but these strategies wouldn’t work for me. I loved sitting down with a glass of wine beside me, opening the file and clattering the keys with my two index fingers and one thumb. I loved seeing the words appear on the screen and to be immersed in the world I was creating out of my imagination and memory and physically with my hands. To do anything else wouldn’t feel like writing.

  So I had no idea this book would be my last when I wrote it and that’s good. Knowing that could have imparted a tone—perhaps regret, perhaps self-pity—wholly inappropriate to Cliff. As it was, I gave it an ending intrinsic to the story, a very Cliff Hardy ending. And I’m happy with it.

  LIST OF BOOKS

  FICTION

  Cliff Hardy series

  The Dying Trade (1980)

  White Meat (1981)

  The Marvellous Boy (1982)

  The Empty Beach (1983)

  Heroin Annie (1984)

  Make Me Rich (1985)

  The Big Drop (1985)

  Deal Me Out (1986)

  The Greenwich Apartments (1986)

  The January Zone (1987)

  Man in the Shadows (1988)

  O’Fear (1990)

  Wet Graves (1991)

  Aftershock (1991)

  Beware of the Dog (1992)

  Burn, and Other Stories (1993)

  Matrimonial Causes (1993)

  Casino (1994)

  The Washington Club (1997)

  Forget Me If You Can (1997)

  The Reward (1997)

  The Black Prince (1998)

  The Other Side of Sorrow (1999)

  Lugarno (2001)

  Salt and Blood (2002)

  Master’s Mates (2003)

  The Coast Road (2004)

  Taking Care of Business (2004)

  Saving Billie (2005)

  The Undertow (2006)

  Appeal Denied (2007)

  The Big Score (2007)

  Open File (2008)

  Deep Water (2009)

  Torn Apart (2010)

  Follow the Money (2011)

  Comeback (2012)

  The Dunbar Case (2013)

  Silent Kill (2014)

  Gun Control (2015)

  That Empty Feeling (2016)

  Win, Lose or Draw (2017)

  Ray Crawley series (co-written with Bill Garner)

  Pokerface (1985)

  The Baltic Business (1988)

  The Kimberley Killing (1989)

  The Cargo Club (1990)

  The Azanian Action (1991)

  The Japanese Job (1992)

  The Time Trap (1993)

  The Vietnam Volunteer (2000)

  Richard Browning series

  ‘Box Office’ Browning (1987)

  ‘Beverly Hills’ Browning (1987)

  Browning Takes Off (1989)

  Browning in Buckskin (1991)

  Browning P.I. (1992)

  Browning Battles On (1993)

  Browning Sahib (1994)

  Browning Without a Cause (1995)

  Luke Dunlop series

  Set Up (1992)

  Cross Off (1993)

  Get Even (1994)

  Young Adult fiction

  Blood Brothers (2007) />
  Historical fiction

  The Gulliver Fortune (1989)

  Naismith’s Dominion (1990)

  The Brothers Craft (1992)

  Wimmera Gold (1994)

  The Journal of Fletcher Christian (2005)

  Wishart’s Quest (2009)

  The Colonial Queen (2011)

  Other fiction

  The Winning Side (1984)

  A Round of Golf: Tales from around the greens (1998)

  Standing in the Shadows: Three novellas (2013)

  NON-FICTION

  Biography

  Fred Hollows: An autobiography (with Fred Hollows) (1991)

  Fighting for Fraser Island: A man and an island (with John Sinclair) (1994)

  Ray Barrett: An autobiography (with Ray Barrett) (1995)

  Heart Matters: Personal stories about that heart-stopping moment (edited with Michael Wilding) (2010)

  Damned if I Do (with Philip Nitschke) (2013)

  Autobiography

  Sweet & Sour: A diabetic life (2000)

  True crime

  Mad Dog: William Cyril Moxley and the Moorebank killings (2011)

  Sport

  Lords of the Ring: A history of prize-fighting in Australia (1980)

  The Picador Book of Golf (edited with Jamie Grant) (1995)

  Ringside: A knockout collection of fights and fighters (edited with Barry Parish) (1996)

  Best on Ground: Great writers on the greatest game (edited with John Dale) (2010)

  Pacific history

  Passage, Port and Plantation: A history of Solomon Islands labour migration, 1870–1914 (1973)

  The South Sea Islanders and the Queensland Labour Trade by W.T. Wawn (edited by Peter Corris) (1973)

  The Cruise of the Helena: A labour-recruiting voyage to the Solomon Islands by J.D. Melvin (edited by Peter Corris) (1977)

 

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