Sydney Book launch: Peter Doyle’s ‘The Big Whatever’

Contrappasso contributor Peter Doyle is launching his new crime novel The Big Whatever in Sydney on Sunday, September 13. Get along and grab a copy. Honours will be performed by special guest, artist-novelist Fiona McGregor, ceremonies will be mastered by the legendary outlaw James Scanlon, and the house will be rocked by hillbilly hardliners, Satellite V.

The Big Whatever, which contains an introduction by Luc Sante, is published by Dark Passage Books, an imprint of Verse Chorus Press. An earlier Billy Glasheen adventure, ‘Cold War, Hot Dogs’, appeared in Contrappasso issue #1.

If you can’t make the launch to buy a copy of the new novel, it’s now available as a Kindle ebook at Amazon.com or in epub format at Booktopia. For the paperback, try Gleebooks or Booktopia, or else Amazon.com.

Contrappasso contributors: Peter Doyle

No, that’s not a mugshot of Australian writer Peter Doyle – they haven’t caught him yet. It’s a still from his most recent book of historic Sydney police photographs, Crooks Like Us (Historic Houses Trust, 2009).

Man of a thousand talents, Peter Doyle is also a crime novelist. His three Billy Glasheen novels – Get Rich Quick (1996), Amaze Your Friends (1998), and The Devil’s Jump (2001) – scope out Sydney’s postwar underworld with dead-accurate period lingo and mean street attitude. It’s the straight dope on the Menzies era brought to life through the shenanigans of hopped-up rock n’ rollers, wild bodgies, pill-popping con artists, and sintime beatniks. The Glasheen trilogy is some of the best Australian historical fiction on the shelves.

Contrappasso is thrilled to present another installment of the Glasheen saga, ‘Cold War, Hot Dogs’, in issue #1. The story will appear here at the website tomorrow.

But first, check out writer Fiona McGregor’s recent career appraisal of Doyle, Peter Doyle’s Sydney: Crooks Like Us.

And this video: