Melbourne during the depression. A seedy, corrupt city. Someone has struck at the heart of Australia's soul: they have killed the horse that would have won the Melbourne Cup. For what motive? Profit, blackmail, a betting scam? Only Tom Pink, the rider of the murdered horse can find out. Tom, born into the underworld he now tries to defeat, exposes graft and blackmail that reaches to the upper echelons of Melbourne society. His life and the lives of those he holds close will never be the same again. The Great Melbourne Cup Mystery, written in 1933, a year after the mysterious death of Phar Lap (winner of the 1930 Melbourne Cup) is a previously lost classic of Australian crime fiction.

This work is a composite index of the complete runs of all mystery and detective fan magazines that have been published, through 1981. Added to it are indexes of many magazines of related nature. This includes magazines that are primarily oriented to boys' book collecting, the paperbacks, and the pulp magazine hero characters, since these all have a place in the mystery and detective genre.

Why was King Henry, an aboriginal from Western Australia, killed in New South Wales? What was the feud that led to murder after nineteen long years had passed? Who was the woman who saw the murder and kept silent? This first story of Inspector Bonaparte takes him to the Darling River bush country where he encounters those problems he understands so well - mixed blood and divided loyalties. Rampageous fisticuffs, rough scenery and rougher, dust-covered sheepmen and wanderers, dignified aboriginals, and so much interest and local colour. - Books and Bookmen

Australian crime fiction has grown from the country's origins as an 18th-century English prison colony. Early stories focused on escaped convicts becoming heroic bush rangers, or how the system mistreated those who were wrongfully convicted. Later came thrillers about wealthy free settlers and lawless gold-seekers, and urban crime fiction, including Fergus Hume's 1887 international best-seller The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, set in Melbourne. The 1980s saw a surge of private-eye thrillers, popular in a society skeptical of police. Twenty-first century authors have focused on policemen--and increasingly policewomen--and finally indigenous crime narratives. The author explores in detail this rich but little known national subgenre.

This is an encyclopedic work, arranged by broad categories and then by original authors, of literary pastiches in which fictional characters have reappeared in new works after the deaths of the authors that created them. It includes book series that have continued under a deceased writer's real or pen name, undisguised offshoots issued under the new writer's name, posthumous collaborations in which a deceased author's unfinished manuscript is completed by another writer, unauthorized pastiches, and "biographies" of literary characters. The authors and works are entered under the following categories: Action and Adventure, Classics (18th Century and Earlier), Classics (19th Century), Classics (20th Century), Crime and Mystery, Espionage, Fantasy and Horror, Humor, Juveniles (19th Century), Juveniles (20th Century), Poets, Pulps, Romances, Science Fiction and Westerns. Each original author entry includes a short biography, a list of original works, and information on the pastiches based on the author's characters.

The Rough Guide to Melbourne is the ultimate travel guide with clear maps and detailed coverage of all the best attractions Melbourne has to offer. Discover Melbourne's coolest bars and the hippest Melbourne hotels to the immense changes to the fabric of the city itself. Packed with detailed, practical advice on what to see and do in Melbourne, get the lowdown on Melbourne's renowned live music and club scenes and whet your appetite for its restaurants with a insert on its eclectic multicultural cuisine for all budgets. Features include detailed coverage on the lively Melbourne city centre and dynamic outer suburbs; the cafes of Fitzroy, Prahran and South Yarra shopping, and the beaches of St Kilda to wine tasting tours of the Yarra Valley and road trips along the magnificent Great Ocean Road. You'll find authoritative background on Melbourne's history, film and books. Explore all corners of Australia's fastest growing city, with the clearest Melbourne maps, street plans and tram and train maps of any guide. Make the most of your holiday with The Rough Guide to Melbourne.

Australian genre fiction writers have successfully exploited the Australian landscape and peoples and as a result their books are today “sold by the millions” across boundaries. They have created stories that are imaginative, visionary, and diverse. They appeal to local and international readerships and, most importantly, are thoroughly entertaining, thus making them a strong presence in the popular fiction bazaar. Sold by the Millions: Australia’s Bestsellers is the first collection to concentrate on Australia’s best-selling material that forms the armchair reading of many Australians. Leading experts of popular fiction provide introspective pieces on Romance, Horror, Crime, Science Fiction, Western, Comics, Travel, Sports and Children’s writing so that a wholesome picture emerges of the wide range of reading and research options available for scholars.

Both Australia and Arthur W. Upfield (1890-1964) matured together. At the start of the last century, Upfield emigrated to Australia as that nation was gaining independence and identity. The Gallipoli campaign changed both, and both spent the next decades in pursuit of identity, he wandering, Australia finding its own unique place among nations. Arthur W. Upfield lived a life many might envy: unsuccessful student, immigrant (1911), walker, horse breaker and camel driver, soldier, Bushman, fence rider, journalist, intelligence officer, explorer, novelist, swordfisherman, and creator of bi-racial Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, “Bony”, in novels rivaling the popularity of Sherlock Holmes. Caught between two worlds, like his fictional character, Upfield was thoroughly English and yet also an Australian nationalist describing Outback Australia to the world through his part Aboriginal character. Famous novelists including Tony Hillerman and Stan Jones, to name only two, found a detective model in “Bony”. Australia developed quickly after the Second World War, and Upfield, too, was successful after years of tea, chops and damper, chasing “rabbit, ‘roo and dog”. As Australia developed, Upfield’s Bush, his “Australia Proper”, slowly succumbed to modernization. After the war, Upfield left the Bush to become a successful writer eventually to be published in a wide range of languages and selling books in the millions of copies. The biography relies on letters, papers, and public documents of the period, in Australia, England and America, many unexplored before now, in order to understand the story of his life and that of his true homeland, Australia.

Phar Lap's assault on the Melbourne Cup generated unprecedented excitement across the country. At the same time, it filled many bookmakers with dread a victory for the favourite would cost them plenty. He'd have to be stopped, whatever the cost. For the newspapers, the twin stories of sporting greatness and seedy corruption were a sensational cocktail. Readers lapped it up, while for the poor punters, suffering during the Great Depression, a Phar Lap triumph was their best hope of turning one quid into two. Melbourne Cup 1930 is the story of four days in November that became at the same time the most famous and infamous in Cup history. It began with a gunman, like something out of a Chicago gangster movie, apparently trying to kill Phar Lap on a quiet suburban street. With his life in danger and those closest to him terrified, the champion was spirited away to a secret location, while one of the city's most celebrated detectives searched for the culprits. Meanwhile, the other horses, owners, trainers and jockeys were preparing for the biggest race of their lives. Their many diverse stories and the memories they invoke of Cups gone by are an integral part of this unique tale. An hour before the jump, Phar Lap's whereabouts remained a mystery. Finally, he arrived at Flemington, to go almost immediately to the start as a huge crowd cheered him on. The police had been told to put men down the back of the track, in case the gunman tried one last time, but they now believed that the original assassination attempt might not have been all that it seemed. Nothing it appears could stop Phar Lap now

On a signboard at Cobargo I read the magic word 'Bermagui'. "That's the place Zane Grey wrote about," remarked my son. "That's the place I'm looking for," I decided. And what a place! Oh, what a place. The air like wine and as cool as that in the green ferntree depths of the gully beside my mountain home! The surf everlastingly playing its music on the sand beach before the town, and the great rocky headland to seaward… Arthur Upfield was Australia's first international crime writer when he first stayed at Bermagui around the time of Zane Grey's visit there in 1936. This book holds a previously unknown Bony story set in Bermagui, The Fish That Danced on its Tail, an unpublished story on Big Game Fishing, and stories on Marlin and Swordfish that Upfield wrote only for the Bermagui Anglers Club. Also included are a chapter from his classic Bony novel, The Mystery of Swordfish Reef, and the only other Bony story - A Wisp of Wool and Disk of Silver and many photographs from the Upfield family archives.