Peter Corris

• Aug-2019
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For almost four decades Peter Corris was known as "the godfather of Australian crime fiction," and Cliff Hardy has been Australia's favorite private investigator since he solved his first case in 1980. This selection of stories starts with Cliff's ea...

• Jan-2017
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A missing teenager, drugs, yachts, the sex trade and a cold trail that leads from Sydney to Norfolk Island, Byron Bay and Coolangatta. Can Cliff Hardy find out what's really going on?  'The godfather of Australian crime fiction.' Will one man's ...

• Oct-2016
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'The godfather of Australian crime fiction' One case still haunts Hardy  Legendary PI Cliff Hardy has reached an age when the obituaries have become part of his reading, and one triggers his memory of a case in the late 1980s. Back then Sydney w...

• Nov-2015
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The Witness Protection Unit's Luke Dunlop has one job - to make people disappear. And that's not easy when there's no margin for error and each case is a matter of life and death. Ex-cop David Scanlon is about to deliver red-hot evidence about his fo...

• Apr-2015
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'The godfather of Australian crime fiction.' Is Sydney gun city? It certainly seems so when Cliff Hardy is hired by entrepreneur and one-time pistol-shooting champion Timothy Greenhall to investigate the violent death of his troubled son. Soon Hardy ...

• Mar-2014
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It was an impulse buy in a Charing Cross bookshop -- Walking Across the World: The Life and Travels of Basil Craft, M.B.E. But from the moment he started reading it Vic Bright's journalist's instinct told him it would make a great film. Once Bright...

• Mar-2014
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It's an explosive situation, and Corris conjures up an atmosphere of brooding tension. British Jeremiah Islands Protectorate, South Pacific, 1928: District Officer Will Naismith doesn't know it yet, but he is in trouble. The rebellious native leader ...

• Mar-2014
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Lying on a blanket beside a smoking camp fire was an irregularly shaped nugget of gold, about the size and roughly the shape of a large marrow. Mount Perfect Ranges, western Victoria, 1872. Henry Fanshaw has stumbled upon one of the largest nuggets e...

• Feb-2014
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When Cliff Hardy signs on as a bodyguard for charismatic populist Rory O'Hara, who is about to embark on a campaign of social and political renewal, it looks like a tricky job - O'Hara has enemies. A murder and a kidnapping cause the campaign to fall...

• Sep-2013
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This wasn't Hardy's usual brief--uncover the mysteries of a nineteenth-century shipwreck--but he could do with an easy case and the retainer was generous. But is it ever that simple? Not with a notorious crime family tearing itself apart, and an unde...

• Oct-2012
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Cliff Hardy has his PI licence back - but does he still have what it takes to cut it on the mean streets of Sydney?Cliff reckons the skills are still there, if a little rusty, and actor Bobby Forrest's case looks promising. Bobby's a nice-enough guy,...

• Apr-2012
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When beautiful young women kiss you on the cheek you know you're over the hill, but I didn't really feel like that. As Wesley said, I still had the moves.' Cliff Hardy may still have the moves but he's in trouble. The economy's tanking and he's been ...

• Jan-2012
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William Cyril Moxley was hanged at Sydney’s Long Bay Gaol in 1932 – the first execution in New South Wales for eight years. His crime was the brutal rape and murder of 21-year-old Dorothy Ruth Denzel and the vicious beating and killing of h...

• Jul-2010
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Cliff Hardy may be semi-retired but he's as resolute as ever in fighting for justice and tracking down wrongdoers.  Hardy has never been much of a family man, so when he meets his second cousin Patrick Malloy it's like being hit with a left hook...

• Apr-2010
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Winner of the Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Fiction 2009 Stripped of his private detective licence and devastated by the murder of his partner Lily Truscott, Cliff Hardy travels to the US to help Lily's brother's tilt for a world boxing title. In Sa...

• Apr-2010
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Cliff Hardy, with his PI licence cancelled and his career in Sydney at an end, is preparing for a trip overseas. Cleaning out his office, he comes across an open file - an unresolved case from the late 1970s. He starts reading and is thrown back to h...

• Sep-2008
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Stripped of his investigator's license and with his appeal denied, Cliff Hardy faces an uncertain future. Then something very personal happens and sends him off doing what he does best ... confronting, questioning, provoking violence ... with his lac...

• Sep-2008
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In this new collection of shot stories, Cliff Hardy has his hands full with murder, blackmail, embezzlement and more. True to form, Cliff doesn't waste words or pull punches as he untangles an ugly divorce, investigates the killing of a Glebe drinkin...

• Jul-2007
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Frank Parker, retired senior policeman and Cliff Hardy's long time friend, has a problem. A case from early in his career involving two doctors, one of whom was convicted of hiring a hit man to kill the other and went to gaol for the crime, is coming...

• Jul-2006
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When journalist Louise Kramer hires Cliff Hardy to find Billie Marchant, Hardy heads to unfamiliar territory of the far southwest suburbs of Sydney. Billie claims to have information about media-wheel Jonas Clement ... the subject of an incriminating...

• Oct-2005
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A fast-paced and entertaining collection of stories featuring Australia's favourite PI, Cliff Hardy. 'The godfather of Australian crime fiction.' I was starting to get interested. As someone who thinks stockmarkets, futures trading and currency specu...

• Jun-2005
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Cliff Hardy trades the mean streets of Sydney for the Illawarra escarpment, a rugged undeveloped area of Australia, in this latest hard-boiled detective novel. First hired by the daughter of the late, wealthy Frederick Farmer to investigate his myste...

• Jun-2005
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When rich, attractive Lorraine Master hires Cliff Hardy to investigate the circumstances surrounding her husband's conviction for smuggling heroin from New Caledonia, Hardy welcomes the assignment. A week on generous expenses sniffing about under a t...

• Jan-2005
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• May-2002
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'The big black car came up out of nowhere... I heard a siren and slowed down and pulled over like an honest citizen. The next thing I knew two men with hats pulled down over their eyes and sunglasses on above their tough expressions were pulling open...

• 2002
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'The godfather of Australian crime fiction.' An old flame, former police officer Glen Withers, is back in Cliff Hardy's life - but it's strictly business as Glen is now also a private investigator, with a wealthy family for a client. She and Hardy jo...

• 2001
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'The godfather of Australian crime fiction.' Although the meaner streets of inner Sydney are his traditional stamping grounds, Cliff Hardy finds that crime can flourish in the leafy, well-heeled outer suburbs as well. Lugarno may be an unlikely centr...

• 1999
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'The godfather of Australian crime fiction.' Cliff Hardy goes to Leichhardt gym proprietor Wesley Scott for a 'fitness assessment' and is soon trying to get his son Clinton - known as The Black Prince - back on the rails. A sports star in the making ...

• 1999
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Corruption, murder and a missing girl: routine for Cliff Hardy - except this time it is personal. Cliff Hardy is stunned to get a phone call from his ex-wife Cynthia. It's been over twenty years since she last shouted she never wanted to see him ag...

• 1997
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'The godfather of Australian crime fiction.' A collection of fast-paced, gritty stories from Australia's best-loved crime writer. In stories that range from Sydney's mean back streets to its glittering but deadly harbour, Corris's hero Cliff Hardy co...

• 1997
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'The godfather of Australian crime fiction.' Cliff Hardy is distracted by a romantic entanglement, but low on funds, and with his private investigator's licence restored, he is persuaded to take on a dubious case - a scheme to claim the reward on an ...

• 1997
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'The godfather of Australian crime fiction.' Cliff Hardy's investigation into the murder of a rich developer takes him into the high flying world of corporate Sydney. The beautiful Claudia Fleischman has been charged with the murder of her husband, a...

• 1995
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'I wanted to give him an uppercut for his arrogance and to get him to lift his head. He was still looking at his boots. He'd lit the cigarette and smoke was drifting past his face. It's hard to tell from the top of someone's head, but I was sure that...

• Jul-1994
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'The godfather of Australian crime fiction.' Divorce cases are part of a private investigator's bread and butter, and Cliff Hardy has had his share. This case, though, has a lot more than matrimonial squabbles - add in some perjury, fraud and murder ...

• 1994
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'I'm in love with Vivien Leigh, and I'm the most miserable bastard on earth.' When Browning's old drinking mate Peter Finch utters these words, Browning realizes that trouble looms. Within the space of a few short hours he finds himself caught up in ...

• 1994
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'The godfather of Australian crime fiction.' Casinos are not to Cliff Hardy's liking, nor is wearing a suit and tie, which is why he turns down the job of head of security at a new Sydney gambling establishment. However, when his friend Scott Galvani...

• 1994
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• 1993
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'One of the bayonets came to rest just below my Adam's apple. I looked down at the shiny steel and then slowly looked along the length of the rifle barrel up into the face of my executioner. He wore thick glasses with metal rims and he had gold filli...

• 1993
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'The godfather of Australian crime fiction.' Private investigator Cliff Hardy is nothing if not versatile, and this collection of his cases sees him mixing with the good, the bad and the quirky. He tracks delinquent arsonists, hired killers and missi...

• 1993
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Luke Dunlop is in Witness Protection. He has one job - to make people disappear. And that's not easy when there's no margin for error and each case is a matter of life and death. Convicted felon Kerry Douglas Loew, recently married in prison, makes a...

• 1992
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The blonde was in black stockings, bra and neck ribbon. And she was on fire, as the house around her exploded before Cliff Hardy's eyes. For Hardy it started at a college lecture he gave. One student had begun to haunt him, and another hired him to h...

• 1992
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• 1992
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Luke Dunlop is in Witness Protection. He has one job - to make people disappear. And that's not easy when there's no margin for error and each case is a matter of life and death.Convicted felon Kerry Douglas Loew, recently married in prison, makes a ...

• Apr-1991
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'Well, what do you know,' he said. 'I'm very pleased to meet up with you at last, sport.' I leaned back against the door and started into the mocking grey eyes of Errol Flynn. Down on his luck in southern California in the middle of the Depression, R...

• 1991
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When Oscar Bach's body is found crushed under the rubble, his death is classified as another tragic statistic of the Newcastle earthquake. So how could he have been seen alive five minutes after the quake? Cliff Hardy is hired to find the answers....

• 1991
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• 1991
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'The godfather of Australian crime fiction.' The life of a private investigator is seldom plain sailing, and it certainly doesn't help when someone unknown is trying to cancel your licence. Cliff Hardy needs to find out why, and he also needs to get ...

• Feb-1990
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From nineteenth-century London to colonial Australia, from World War I to Hollywood's golden era, the Gulliver family's legacy of dark secrets, pride, passion, and separation is linked to the discovery of a long-lost Turner masterpiece...

• Nov-1989
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'The godfather of Australian crime fiction.' Charlie Thomas, born in a humpy camp in the 1920s, learns to fight early. He fights in the backblocks of Queensland during the Depression, and in the Middle East and the Pacific in World War Two. Charlie T...

• 1989
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'Howard Hughes nodded approvingly. "Mistu Kelly," he said. "You and yore buddy sure can fly. It's been a privilege, suh, to go up with you."' After being coerced into doing time in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Richard Kelly Browning decides the...

• 1989
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'The godfather of Australian crime fiction.' When Todd Barnes, war veteran and popular drinking mate, leaves Cliff Hardy a tidy sum to find out who killed him, Hardy can hardly refuse - and he needs the money. Todd's widow and some of his cronies are...

• Jan-1989
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This crime novel describes the experiences of one Ray Crawley who is sent to investigate the death of a retired Attorney General and ends up following the widow, exploring the gay sub-culture and travelling around Australia....

• 1988
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• 1988
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Eagle has mastered the ways of the 'elk-dog' - the horse - but must learn survival when his frightened mount carries him far away and leaves him with a broken leg. Then an old man gives him shelter. Is the old man an outcast from the People - or the ...

• 1987
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'I felt lucky. I was heading for the U.S.A., Hollywood and a million dollars. Deal the cards, Jess, I said.' But not all the cards dealt to Browning turn up trumps. And Richard Browning has a marvelous talent for mucking up even lucky breaks. In fact...

• 1987
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'She gazed at me with what I took to be adoration. I gave her a light kiss on the lips. "Is it better the second time?" she said'Richard Browning is a crack-shot, six-foot, all-Australian ex-private-school horseman. He is determined to con his way in...

• 1987
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'The godfather of Australian crime fiction.' Politician Peter January is having trouble staying alive so he hires Cliff Hardy to help him. Hardy dislikes the role of politician's 'security consultant' but he dislikes bombers, hit men and hatemailers ...

• 1986
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Portrait of a PI: Name - Cliff Hardy. Turf - The rowdy pubs and sleepy suburbs of Sydney, Australia. Greatest Strength - Helping friends in trouble. Worst Weakness - Helping friends in trouble. He's a sucker for a sob story, and one of his pals has a...

• 1986
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'The godfather of Australian crime fiction.' Is brilliant young filmmaker Carmel Wise the innocent victim of gangland violence or is she enmeshed in a pornography racket as the press and the police imply? Carmel's businessman father hires Cliff Hardy...

• 1985
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Cliff Hardy returns in this collection of short stories focused on the private investigator A client falls from the 20th story of a building; a rock star goes missing; an erotic Mongol scroll vanishes; a film star has a problem that has nothing to...

• 1985
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'The godfather of Australian crime fiction.' It is just another party in Sydney's eastern suburbs, a routine security job for Cliff Hardy. It leads, though, to an interesting meeting and a dangerous job. No one is more familiar than Hardy with the sl...

• 1985
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• 1984
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Cliff Hardy is in action again: trying to keep one step ahead of his client's troubles - and his own. He goes from sleazy backstreets to boardrooms in skyscrapers - dealing with everyone from fashion models and teenage junkies to urban developers and...

• 1983
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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 cas...

• 1982
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It's no secret that the people who hire Hardy have nowhere else to turn -- and Lady Catherine needs her heir to be found now Lady Catherine presides over the declining fortunes of the Chatterton estate, which is lacking a suitable heir. When she h...

• 1981
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PI Cliff Hardy needs a nice smooth job, something to pay the bills -- and keep his glass filled -- but this job is anything but smooth Cliff Hardy is stone broke, which makes it hard to resist a job from the man he's been losing money to. Ted Tarl...

• 1980
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Hardy needs work. In fact, he's the type of detective who never turns down a case. He can afford not to. So when wealthy Bryn Gutteridge, a real estate heir who amuses himself by shooting seagulls, asks Hardy to find out who has been threatening his ...

• Jan-1969
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