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Peter Corris
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Peter Corris was born in Stawell, Victoria, in 1942. He has worked as a lecturer and researcher in history as well as a freelance writer and journalist, specialising in sports writing. He has written thrillers, a social history of prizefighting in Australia, quiz books, radio and television scripts, and the historical novels The Gulliver Fortune, Naismith's Dominion, The Brothers Craft, and Wimmera Gold. He is also the co-author of Fred Hollows, An Autobiography.
In 1999 Peter Corris was awarded the Ned Kelly Lifetime Achievement Award by the Crime Writers Association of Australia. His previous Cliff Hardy Novel, The Black Prince , was shortlisted for Best Australian Crime novel.
Full Series List in Order
A Cliff Hardy Mystery
1 - The Dying Trade (1980)2 - White Meat (1981)
3 - The Marvelous Boy (1982)
4 - The Empty Beach (1983)
5 - Heroin Annie and Other Cliff Hardy Stories (1984)
6 - Make Me Rich (1985)
7 - The Big Drop (1985)
8 - Deal Me Out (1986)
9 - The Greenwich Apartments (1986)
10 - The January Zone (1987)
11 - The Man in the Shadows (1988)
12 - O'Fear (1989)
13 - Wet Graves (1991)
14 - Aftershock (1991)
15 - Beware of the Dog (1992)
16 - Matrimonial Causes (Jul-1994)
17 - Burn and Other Stories (1993)
18 - Casino (1994)
19 - The Washington Club (1997)
20 - Forget Me If You Can: Cliff Hardy stories (1997)
21 - The Reward (1997)
22 - The Black Prince (1999)
23 - The Other Side of Sorrow (1999)
24 - Lugarno (2001)
25 - Salt and Blood (2002)
26 - Master's Mates (Jun-2005)
27 - The Coast Road (Jun-2005)
28 - Taking Care of Business (Oct-2005)
29 - Saving Billie (Jul-2006)
30 - The Undertow (Jul-2007)
31 - Appeal Denied (Sep-2008)
32 - The Big Score (Sep-2008)
33 - Open File (Apr-2010)
34 - Deep Water (Apr-2010)
35 - Torn Apart (Jul-2010)
36 - Follow the Money (Apr-2012)
37 - Comeback (Oct-2012)
Luke Dunlop
1 - Set Up (1992)2 - Cross Off (1993)
Ray Crawley
1 - Pokerface (1985)2 - The Baltic Business (1988)
3 - The Kimberly Killing (Jan-1989)
4 - The Cargo Club (Jan-1969)
5 - The Azanian Action (1991)
6 - The Japanese Job (1992)
7 - The Time Trap (1994)
Richard Browning
1 - "Box Office" Browning (1987)2 - "Beverly Hills" Browning (1987)
3 - Browning Takes Off (1989)
4 - Browning in Buckskin (Apr-1991)
5 - Browning P.I. (May-2002)
6 - Browning Battles On (1993)
7 - Browning Sahib (1994)
8 - Browning Without a Cause (1995)
Book List in Order: 68 titles
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The Dying Trade
- 1980
- / Private Investigator
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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 hi...
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White Meat
- 1981
- / Private Investigator
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He needs a nice smooth job, something to pay the bills - and keep his glass filled. But smooth this one isn't. Ted Tarleton is a very rich bookie whose beautiful, spoiled daughter, Noni, is missing. Tarleton wants Hardy to find her. The logical place...
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The Marvelous Boy
- 1982
- / Private Investigator
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'The godfather of Australian crime fiction.' Lady Catherine presides over the declining fortunes of the Chatterton estate, which is lacking a suitable heir. When she hears of a grandson she never knew, Cliff Hardy takes the job, reluctantly, of findi...
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The Empty Beach
- 1983
- / Private Investigator
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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...
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Heroin Annie and Other Cliff Hardy Stories
- 1984
- / Private Investigator
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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...
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The Big Drop
- 1985
- / Private Investigator
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'The godfather of Australian crime fiction.' A client falls from the twentieth storey of a building; a rock star goes missing; an erotic Mongol scroll vanishes; a film star has a problem that has nothing to do with creativity - it's all in a day's wo...
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Make Me Rich
- 1985
- / Private Investigator
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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...
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Deal Me Out
- 1986
- / Private Investigator
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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...
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The Greenwich Apartments
- 1986
- / Private Investigator
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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 to find the real reason 'the video girl' was...
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"Beverly Hills" Browning
- 1987
- / Suspense
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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 fac...
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"Box Office" Browning
- 1987
- / Suspense
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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 hi...
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The January Zone
- 1987
- / Private Investigator
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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 even more. Protecting January leads to protec...
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The Man in the Shadows
- 1988
- / Private Investigator
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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 ...
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The Kimberly Killing
- Jan-1989
- / Suspense
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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....
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Browning Takes Off
- 1989
- / Suspense
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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 Browni...
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The Winning Side
- Nov-1989
- / Mystery
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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 Tho...
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The Gulliver Fortune
- Feb-1990
- / General Fiction
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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...
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Aftershock
- 1991
- / Private Investigator
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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....
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Browning in Buckskin
- Apr-1991
- / Suspense
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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 Dep...
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Beware of the Dog
- 1992
- / Private Investigator
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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...
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Browning Battles On
- 1993
- / Suspense
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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 f...
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Burn and Other Stories
- 1993
- / Private Investigator
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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 missin...
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Browning Sahib
- 1994
- / Suspense
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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 cau...
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Matrimonial Causes
- Jul-1994
- / Private Investigator
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Confronting his insecurity over his first case, Australian P.I. and Southeast Asian war veteran Cliff Hardy sees the subject of his observations killed and is drawn into an underworld of mob tyranny, black money, and survival. Original....
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Browning Without a Cause
- 1995
- / Suspense
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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 s...
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Forget Me If You Can: Cliff Hardy stories
- 1997
- / Private Investigator
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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'...
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The Reward
- 1997
- / Private Investigator
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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 a...
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The Black Prince
- 1999
- / Private Investigator
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Cliff Hardy is called to investigate the death of a prominent athlete's girlfriend, in his 22nd case
The Other Side of Sorrow
- 1999
- / Private Investigator
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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...
Salt and Blood
- 2002
- / Private Investigator
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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 joi...
Browning P.I.
- May-2002
- / Suspense
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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 op...
The Coast Road
- Jun-2005
- / Private Investigator
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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...
Master's Mates
- Jun-2005
- / Private Investigator
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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...
Taking Care of Business
- Oct-2005
- / Private Investigator
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Private investigator Cliff Hardy is no financial genius, but in this collection of hard-boiled detective stories he pursues white-collar criminals with the same doggedness he applies to his more downmarket villains. A conveniently placed telephone bo...
Saving Billie
- Jul-2006
- / Private Investigator
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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...
The Undertow
- Jul-2007
- / Private Investigator
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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...
Appeal Denied
- Sep-2008
- / Private Investigator
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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 l...
The Big Score
- Sep-2008
- / Private Investigator
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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...
Deep Water
- Apr-2010
- / Private Investigator
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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...
Torn Apart
- Jul-2010
- / Private Investigator
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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...
Follow the Money
- Apr-2012
- / Private Investigator
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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 ...
Dunbar Case
- Sep-2013
- / Suspense
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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...
Silent Kill
- Feb-2014
- / Action Adventure
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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...
The Brothers Craft
- Mar-2014
- / Action Adventure
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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 Bri...
Naismith's Dominion
- Mar-2014
- / Action Adventure
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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 lea...
Wimmera Gold
- Mar-2014
- / Action Adventure
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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...
Gun Control
- Apr-2015
- / Mystery
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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 ...
That Empty Feeling
- Oct-2016
- / Mystery
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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 Sydn...
Win, Lose or Draw
- Jan-2017
- / General Fiction
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'The godfather of Australian crime fiction.' Will one man's loss be Hardy's gain? 'I'd read about it in the papers, heard the radio reports and seen the TV coverage and then forgotten about it, the way you do with news stories.' A missing girl, drugs...
See You at the Toxteth
- Aug-2019
- / Law Enforcement
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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 favourite private investigator since he solved his first case in 1980. This selection of stories starts with Cliff's e...
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Peter Corris has published 68 books.Peter Corris does not have a new book coming out soon. The latest book, See You at the Toxteth, was published in August 2019.The first book by Peter Corris, The Cargo Club, was published in January 1969.Yes. Peter Corris has 4 series.
