Showing results by author "Robert Gott" in All Categories

Up-and-coming junior minister Gregory Buchanan has had a portrait painted of himself by the acclaimed artist Sophie White - a painting she intends to enter in this year's Archibald Prize. Until then, Gregory has hung it in pride of place on his dining-room wall. It's a life-sized standing portrait, practically photographic in nature. And it's a nude. His wife will be home soon and he thinks the painting will be a pleasant surprise. Even more surprising will be an unexpected accumulation of guests.

In 1944, in the outer-Melbourne suburb of Nunawading, the brutal deaths of a family herald the return of a long-forgotten cult. A man named Anthony Prescott has declared himself the Messiah, and has promised his followers immortality. There are those who believe him—and who are ready to kill in his name. Inspector Titus Lambert of the Melbourne Homicide unit, whose detectives are over-stretched, requests the discreet assistance of Helen Lord and Joe Sable, once members of his unit, now private inquiry agents.

In the autumn of 1944, George Starling prepares to exact revenge on the person he hates most in the world (and Starling has a long list of people he hates): detective Joe Sable of the Melbourne Homicide division. Driven by his dark passion for Nazism, Starling is going to make sure that nothing and no one will stand in his way and survive. In the meantime, Homicide is in turmoil. Riven by internal divisions and disrupted by the war, it has become a dangerous place for Joe to work.

Will Power has returned from the Northern Territory shaken, stirred and generally discombobulated. It is late 1942, and, demeaningly enough, he finds himself playing a pantomime dame. If only this was his only worry.... As his great hero, Shakespeare, once noted, 'When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions'. Can Will finally overcome his tendency to be the living embodiment of Murphy's law?

It's 1942, and war is raging in Europe and in the Pacific. The Japanese army is on Australia's doorstep, and the small coastal Queensland town of Maryborough is on full war footing. What they are not prepared for is the arrival in the town of a troupe of incompetent actors whose unjustifiably self-confident leader, William Power, is determined to bring his daring production of Titus Andronicus to the barbarians of rural Australia. Unfortunately for the Power Players, the only gift William Power has is a capacity for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Failed Shakespearean actor and would-be private detective William Power returns to Melbourne in this wry sequel that re-creates the tension and fear of wartime Australia. Bloodied and broken but somehow unbowed, he arrives in a town struggling under war-rationing and full of cocky American soldiers and lands squarely in the bosom of his childhood home in Carlton, now dominated by his sister-in-law, the odious Darlene.

On Christmas Eve, 1943, the newly formed but undermanned Homicide division of the Melbourne police force is called to investigate the vicious double murder of a father and son. When Military Intelligence becomes involved, Homicide's Inspector Titus Lambert must unravel the personal from the political. If only the killings had stopped at two. The police are desperate to come to grips with an extraordinary and disquieting upsurge of violence.

1943: the newly formed Homicide division of the Victoria Police has been struggling to counter little-known fascist groups, particularly an organisation called Australia First that has been festering since before the war. And now there's an extra problem: the bitter divide between Catholics and Protestants, which is especially raw in small rural communities. Detective Joe Sable and Constable Helen Lord are working to track down the ruthless George Starling, who in turn is planning to wreak vengeance on them for the downfall of his nationalist group and mentor.