British-born journalist and columnist Mark Dapin arrived in Australia in 1989, and has written for a number of publications including The Australian Financial Review, Meanjin and, most recently, the Sydney Morning Herald’s Good Weekend, picking up a Masters in Journalism along the way and teaching journalism at the University of Sydney and Macleay College.
Read:
King of the Cross (2009) where Jacob Mendoza, the eighty-year-old Godfather of Kings Cross wants to tell his epic life story and thinks he's found the right ghost writer in the form of Anthony Klein, a journalist working for The Australian Jewish Times who isn't, as it turns out, quite what he appears to be.
Mendoza, on the other hand is exactly what he seems to be, a street-wise thug with a taste for fornication and an ability to arrange the same for others, someone who manages to stay a step ahead of the opposition by judicious payments of protection money to corrupt police and politicians, disposes of those who can't be corrupted and turns the profits from his dodgy dealings into prime real estate to add a veneer of respectability to his enterprises. Mendoza, to all intents and purposes, equates to the notorious Abe Saffron, and delivers his part of the narrative through rambling self-justifying monologues, while Klein fills in the spaces between interviews with his own adventures and back story.
Investigate availability of:
Sex & money (2004)
Fridge magnets are Bastards (2007)
Strange country (2008)
Spirit House (2011)
