I learned from a young age to question everything. The law always interested me, but I was an impatient high school graduate who instead completed a journalism cadetship in Sydney, Australia. I always loved police reporting and the ability to get inside the ‘real’ story where few others could. There is a certain pleasure observing the lives of (witting or unwitting) criminals and an element of “there by the grace…” too! I’ve always empathised with the underdog and the Drug Grannies were indeed just that. I believed there was more to their story. Earning their trust was important. I threw myself into their fight – more an activist than a journalist!
I wrote
Betrayed: The incredible untold inside story of the two most unlikely drug-running grannies in Australian history
This is a gripping crime novel by an Australian author who tantalizingly weaves the wonder of the land down under within a deeper mystery mixing guilt, grief, and the complexities of family life in the outback.
For the uninitiated, it takes the reader to parts of Australia where few visitors travel… except the circus, their workers, and their secrets. The reader can almost taste the red dust, and sweat the heat in this wonderful book. There is no private when crime becomes public!
I really enjoyed the author’s ability to bring the reader through so many suspenseful crescendos without ever losing us, and then dropping an absolute unexpected ‘reveal’ in the end. Brilliantly done!
"Politically savvy, cleverly plotted...the kind of book that invites the ravenous language of binge reading: compulsive, propulsive, addictive."--New York Times Book Review
For fans of Jane Harper’s The Dry or Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects, a searing debut crime novel set in the Australian outback, where the grief and guilt surrounding an unsolved disappearance still haunt a small farming community…and will ultimately lead to a reckoning.
The tiny outback town of Nannine lies in the harsh red interior of Australia. Once a thriving center of stockyards and sheep stations, years of punishing drought have petrified the land and Nannine has been…
This is an outstanding inside look that goes well, well beyond the typical “whistleblower”-type tomes.
Keith Banks was a copper for 20 years in one of Australia’s most corrupt police organisations – the Queensland Police Force. During the 1980s, he let his hair grow, then down, and went undercover as a drug cop. As Banks says: “Undercover was like guerrilla warfare; to understand your enemy, you had to walk amongst them, to become them.”
Some of the decisions he had to make about allowing drugs – including heroin – get onto the street, and into the arms of kids barely into their teens in order to track down the major suppliers, are heartbreaking. This has to be one of the best Australian true crime/memoirs in many decades.
'Banks has told his story in a raw and honest autobiography. It is the best true crime book published in Australia in a decade.' -John Silvester, Crime Reporter for The Age
Undercover was like guerrilla warfare; to understand your enemy, you had to walk amongst them, to become them. The trick was to keep an eye on that important line between who you were and who you were pretending to be.
This is the true story of Keith Banks, one of Queensland's most decorated police officers, and his journey into the world of drugs as an undercover operative in the…
This is a memoir by a former narcotics agent who writes about a major drug importation masterminded by a combination of crooks and cops (though it is hard sometimes to work out who was who!).
On a broader scale, Operation Jungle also details the high-level corruption which existed in Queensland under disgraced senior police and politicians in league with each other. Shobbrook – as a brave, serving narcotics agent who transferred into the Australian Federal Police – “ratted” on the corrupt police and politicians before the Australian Royal Commission of Inquiry into Drugs, and so sealed his fate.
Australia was not ready for the truth. Instead of treating his evidence with respect, the author was forced out of the Australian Federal Police in 1980. It’s a gripping, thrilling true story.
A gripping blend of memoir, true crime, and corruption in the tropics. In the late 1970s, criminal mastermind John Milligan and his associates conspired to import heroin into Far North Queensland via a remote mountain-top airdrop. In a story that is stranger than fiction, it took them three trips through dense jungle to locate the heroin, but they only recovered one of the two packages. When narcotics agent John Shobbrook took on the investigation of this audacious crime, codenamed ‘Operation Jungle,’ his career was on the rise within the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. What he discovered unwittingly set in motion…
There would be few Australians who didn’t know the name Ned Kelly, but there are likely many Australians who are uncertain whether Kelly was a good guy (a la Robin Hood) or a down-and-out bushranger scoundrel (i.e., bad guy).
The research that has gone into this wonderful story is breathtaking, and the fact the author is a distant relative of one of the policemen who hunted Ned Kelly is all the more remarkable. It’s about the law, justice, payback, character, and, importantly, values. The book brings a bygone rural era back to life, with real page-turning impetus lacing the suspense and drama in a way few history books offer.
Read this if you love real-life stories and want to learn more about Australia’s most notorious criminal.
Partway through the Jerilderie Letter, Ned Kelly accused Senior Constable Anthony Strahan of threatening him: ‘he would shoot me … like a dog.’ Those few fateful words have echoed through Australian history and been the cause of much bloodshed and violence. They ushered in a national myth: the legend of the Kelly Gang. For two days after Anthony reputedly made his threat, Ned and his gang shot dead three police in an event now known as the Stringybark Creek killings. Ned’s reason for opening fire? He thought one cop was Anthony. Lachlan Strahan, Anthony’s great-great-grandson, grew up believing Ned Kelly…
Discovery of a mysterious blues harp/harmonica by Seaford's Kananook Creek takes Chris Hunter on a wild, musical odyssey through the Australian outback to Perth, India, Bangkok, Borneo, and Rio.
Richard Andrews’ debut novel is an exciting mixture of sci-fi, mysticism, and adventure notwithstanding the book’s lead character is a cynical journalist who pursues Canberra's suppressed esoteric secret in a fight against the Alt Right.
On the journey to self-discovery, Hunter’s reality morphs with mythological gods, heroes, and villains, manifested as bikers, prophets, gun runners, shady businessmen, neo-Nazis, and miners. Key to the Highway is in a way a “hero’s journey. Get your leathers on for this exciting motorcycle odyssey towards self-discovery; it’s certainly a wild ride!
A cosmic motorbike fantasy and a magical blues harp take Chris Hunter on a wild, Orphic odyssey through the Australian Outback to Indonesia, India, Bangkok, Borneo and Rio. His reality morphs into a mythological world of gods and demons, manifested as bikers, prophets, gun runners, drug smugglers, shady businessmen and neo-Nazis. Empowered by an ancient esoteric secret, his journey to self-discovery climaxes in a battle with Alt-Right forces.
Betrayed is a fascinating and often jaw-dropping true story of two American women who unwittingly became Australia's 'Drug Grannies'. In 1977, Vera Hays and Florice Bessire thought they were about to embark on the trip of a lifetime when Vera's nephew, Vern, offered them a campervan to drive from Germany to India. Little did the women know Vern would secretly load drugs into the vehicle along the way. This inside story chronicles the women’s wild ride across continents and oceans to Australia, their arrest by narcotics agents, and all that the women faced in jail in the aftermath. As a journalist at the time, I have used interviews with the women and their diaries to tell this incredible tale, and their fight for justice.
Edge of the Known World is a near-future love and adventure story about a brilliant young refugee caught in era when genetic screening tests like 23AndMe make it impossible to hide a secret identity. The novel is distributed by Simon & Schuster. It is a USA Today Bestseller and 2024 American Fiction Awards Winner in multiple categories, including Best New Fiction, Political Thriller, and Science Fiction: General.
Alexandra is a gifted student, adoring daughter, and exuberant prankster. She is also hiding in the open. After a blissful childhood, Alex learned she’s an illegal refugee from a brutal regime, smuggled into…
Fans of Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake will be swept away by this riveting speculative fiction adventure and love story about family, genetic privacy, and the onrushing future of surveillance technology.
2024 American Fiction Awards Winner in multiple categories, including Best New Fiction, Political Thriller, and Science Fiction
Alexandra Tashen is a brilliant student, adoring daughter, merry wit, and exuberant prankster. After a blissful childhood on a Texas ranch, she learns the truth: She is a refusé, an illegal refugee smuggled into the Allied Nations as an infant. Everyone from her birth region carries a harmless but detectable bit of…
