Other titles:
- The Colonial Queen (2011), set on and around a Murray River paddle steamer in 1886.
Brought together by a string of unrelated circumstances and coincidences, prostitute Rosa Nightingale, her long-lost brother Peter, returned soldier Lucas Ramsay (on the run after a bank robbery, with police officer Griffith Summerhill and journalist Martin Truscott in pursuit), pugilist Stanley Stoneham, his manager (whose brother happens to be the paddle steamer’s captain), and alcoholic doctor Alexander McPherson are en route from Echuca to Adelaide, encountering intrigue, exhibition bouts, shipboard romance, disease, fire and a near mutiny along the way.
Their back stories touch on a variety of wider themes, including Federation, frontier violence, and blackbirding in Queensland. An interesting read...
On my shelves:
The Dying Trade (1980)
The Marvellous Boy (1982)
Heroin Annie and other Cliff Hardy stories (1984)
The Big Drop and other Cliff Hardy Stories (1985)
Make Me Rich (1985)
The Greenwich Apartments (1986)
The January Zone (1987)
Aftershock (1991)
Wet Graves (1991)
Matrimonial Causes (1993)
The Reward (1997)
Master's Mates (2003)
The Coast Road (2004)
Saving Billie (2004)
The Undertow (2006)
Appeal Denied (2007)