Appeal Denied: A Cliff Hardy Novel (21 page)

Given the way she’d contributed to Lily’s death, and how she’d lied to and manipulated Townsend and me, it was almost comforting to know that she wasn’t as clever and covert as she thought she was. Or that things were more complicated than she’d imagined. Almost. Somewhere down the track she might get her comeuppance.

27

P
robate on Lily’s estate went through smoothly. Tony sold her house and my share was close enough to three hundred thousand. I got another sixty thousand from Lily’s share portfolio. I gave a chunk of the money to Megan to help her buy a flat. I spent some on fixing up the Glebe house—the roof, the stairs, the windows. I got new carpets and new bathroom and kitchen fittings. The trees were trimmed, the bricks in the courtyard were re-laid and bits that badly needed it got painted. Plenty of money left over.

I stayed with Frank and Hilde while the work was being done and the strange thing was, when I got back to the house, I didn’t like it. Some kind of connection with it had been broken. I junked a lot of the furniture, shoved the rest in storage, put the house up for lease and Frank and Hilde had me back again inside a week.

‘So what’re you going to do?’ Hilde said.

‘Ever heard of Tony Truscott?’

‘No—oh, well I know the surname …’

‘Lily’s younger brother. He’s fighting an elimination bout for a shot at the world welterweight title in Nevada next month. He’s dedicating the fight to Lily. I’m going over there to support him.’

Frank said, ‘Rubbing shoulders with Russ and Jeff and Mike.’

‘That’s right. Ringside.’

‘What then?’ Hilde said.

‘Travel a bit, I suppose. Europe, the States. I would’ve liked to have seen New Orleans when it was operating. Might have to settle for Memphis—Graceland, the Sun studios.’

Hilde persisted. ‘After that?’

I hadn’t looked any further ahead. There were friends scattered around the globe and in Australia. People to catch up with. A few enemies, but no unfinished business.

‘Who knows?’ I said.

A Cliff Hardy novel by Peter Corris

The Coast Road

Wealthy Frederick Farmer died when his weekender burned to the ground. Death by accident, the police found. But his daughter, Dr Elizabeth Farmer, a feisty academic who resembles the younger Germaine Greer, hires Cliff Hardy to investigate. Is her only motive jealousy of her father’s attractive second wife, now very rich?

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