Whilst organising a mock murder hunt for the village fete hosted by Sir George and Lady Stubbs, a feeling of dread settles on the famous crime novelist Adriane Oliver. Call it instinct, but it's a feeling she just can't explain...or get away from.
In desperation she summons her...Read more
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 to the solar plexus—Malloy is his double. Cliff and his cousin become friends and travel to attend a gathering of the Irish Travellers, the gypsy-like folk from...Read more
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 undercover cop playing both...Read more
Stripped of his private detective license and devastated by the murder of his partner Lily Truscott, Cliff Hardy travels to the U.S. to help Lily's brother's tilt for a world boxing title. In San Diego he suffers a heart attack and undergoes a quadruple bypass. He meets nurse Margaret...Read more
Captain Hastings recounts 18 of Poirot’s early cases from the days before he was famous ...
Hercule Poirot delighted in telling people that he was probably the best detective in the world. So turning back the clock to trace eighteen of the cases which helped establish his...Read more
A selection of stories featuring Australia's favourite PI, plus unpublished writing by Peter Corris on crime.
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...Read more
On holiday on the island of Rhodes, Poirot is concerned to observe an eternal triangle between Valentine, Tony and Douglas. His concern is justified when Valentine dies after drinking a poisoned cocktail!
Published in 1936 this story has a very similar plot to that of Evil Under...Read more
Dirty dealings, corrupt cops, computer geeks and a final showdown at an exclusive Sydney beach - is this Cliff Hardy's last adventure?
Stripped of his investigator's licence and with his appeal denied, Cliff Hardy faces an uncertain future. Then something very personal happens...Read more
Cliff Hardy, with his PI license cancelled and his career in Sydney at an end, is preparing for a trip overseas. Cleaning out his office, he comes across an open filean unresolved case from the 1980s. As he starts reading he’s thrown back to his investigation of the disappearance of Justin...Read more
The master of a Victorian mansion dies suddenly – and his sister is convinced it was murder…. When Cora is savagely murdered with a hatchet, the extraordinary remark she made the previous day at her brother Richard’s funeral suddenly takes on a chilling significance. At the reading of...Read more
In his latest investiagion, private eye Cliff Hardy comes to the aid of retired senior policeman and longtime friend, Frank Parker. Haunted by a case from his early career involving two doctors, Parker needs Hardy to uncover the truth and find out if one of the doctors, now deceased, was...Read more
In this hard-boiled detective novel, private investigator Cliff Hardy is looking forward to his new assignment. When rich, beautiful Lorraine Master hires him to look into the circumstances surrounding her husband's conviction for smuggling heroin on the island paradise of New Caledonia,...Read more
Sex, sport and steroids - an explosive mix.
They called him the Black Prince. Southwestern Uni's top athlete, Clinton seemed to have it all: he was destined for sporting stardom and lucky in love - then it all went terribly wrong.
Now Clinton won't rest until he's...Read more
In this new collection of short stories, Cliff Hardy has his hands full of murder, embezzlement, corruption, and more. His punches and sparse-but-rough language help him untangle a divorce, investigate the killing of a drinking buddy, and take care of a nasty case of blackmail. Set in...Read more
I reached gingerly to the back of my head and felt the blood in my hair and the tenderness underneath it. How do they check if a footballer's concussed? Ask him if knows what day it is. I thought I did. I was pretty sure.
An old flame, Glen Withers, has come back into Cliff Hardy...Read more
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 book advertisement leads Hardy to begin...Read more
Hercule Poirot gets an an alarming telephone call late at night, in which the phrases “it’s life and death” and “the table with the yellow irises," are whispered. It results in Poirot rushing to the luxurious restaurant Jardin des Cygnes. He's desperate to stop an impending murder, and find...Read more
It is 1997, and someone is slaughtering young black women in Burdon County, Arkansas.
But no one wants to admit it, not in the Dirty South.
In an Arkansas jail cell sits a former NYPD detective, stricken by grief. He is mourning the death of his wife and child, and...Read more
Cliff Hardy is flattered to be offered the job as head of security at the new Sydney casion. But the thought of office hours and wearing a suit put him off and her refuses in facour of his friend, Scot Galvani.
When Galvani is murdered and the police are indifferent and the widow...Read more
Les is back and on the detox ... All it took was a summer's day and a flat tyre on his push-bike, and Les is out on bail and on the run from a gun-happy street gang intent on a drive-by. So, with Warren's help, Les Norton defendant, becomes Len Gordon film director, safely ensconced at the...Read more
Dot unfolded the note. "He says that his married couple will look after the divine Miss Fisher...I'll leave out a bit...their name is Johnson and they seem very reliable." Phryne got the door open at last. She stepped into the hall. "I think he was mistaken about that," she commented....Read more
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 mysterious and fiery death, Hardy is then...Read more
Two teachers discover the body of the school's unpopular games mistress, shot through the heart from point-blank range. The school is thrown into chaos when the "cat" strikes again, and Julia Upjohn knows that without Poirot's help she could be next.Read more
When the battle-scarred but indefatigable PI loses all his dough to an unscrupulous financial advisor, he has to follow the money trail deep into Sydney's underbelly—the territory of big money and bent deals—to get himself back in the black When beautiful young women kiss you on the cheek...Read more
The third adventure of the Australian private detective pits Cliff Hardy against a serial killer who haunts the waters underneath the Sydney Harbor Bridge, disposing of elderly men.Read more
The fabulous Phryne Fisher, her sister Beth and her faithful maid, Dot, decide that Luna Park is the perfect place for an afternoon of fun and excitement with Phryne's two daughters, Ruth and Jane. But in the dusty dark Ghost Train, amidst the squeals of horror and delight, a mummified...Read more
The new installment in the long-running Cliff Hardy thrillers 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. Sure enough, a murder and a...Read more
An unexpected obituary takes Cliff Hardy on a trip down memory lane to a case he's been trying to forget for twenty years: oil, fraud, boxing, racing - and murder.
One case still haunts Hardy
Legendary PI Cliff Hardy has reached an age when the obituaries have become...Read more
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 is pitched into a world of crooked cops - former members of the Gun Control Unit -...Read more
Private investigator Cliff Hardy tackles one of his most difficult cases yet in this gripping detective novel that finds him in the far southwestern suburbs of Sydney. When a journalist hires him to find Billie Merchant, a woman with incriminating information about media-giant Joanas...Read more