Showing results by author "Peter Corris" in All Categories

Cliff Hardy may still have the moves but he's in trouble. The economy's tanking and he's been conned by an unscrupulous financial advisor and lost everything he's got. Cliff only knows one way, and that's forward, so he's following the money trail. It's a twisted road that leads him down deep into Sydney's underbelly, into the territory of big money, bent deals, big yachts, and bad people. Cliff's in greater danger than ever before, but he's as tenacious as a dog with a bone.

One case still haunts Hardy.... Legendary PI Cliff Hardy has reached an age when the obituaries have become part of his reading, and one triggers his memory of a case in the late 1980s. Back then Sydney was awash with colourful characters, and Cliff is reminded of a case involving 'Ten-Pound Pom' Barry Bartlett and racing identity and investor Sir Keith Mountjoy.

Cliff Hardy is stunned to get a phone call from his ex-wife Cynthia. It has been over 20 years since she last shouted she never wanted to see him again and she was never a woman to change her mind. But that surprise is nothing to the bombshell Cynthia is about to drop. Dying of cancer, she's desperate to get in contact with the daughter she gave up for adoption - and the daughter in question, she confesses, is also Cliff's! A shocked but sceptical Cliff agrees to search for their missing daughter. But this is never going to be a straightforward investigation....

This wasn't Hardy's usual brief - uncover the mysteries of a nineteenth-century shipwreck - but he could do with an easy case and the retainer was generous. But is it ever that simple? Not with a notorious crime family tearing itself apart, and an undercover cop playing both sides against the middle. These and an alluring but fiercely ambitious female journalist give Hardy all the trouble he can handle.

Is Sydney gun city? It certainly seems so when Cliff Hardy is hired by entrepreneur and one-time pistol-shooting champion Timothy Greenhall to investigate the violent death of his troubled son. Soon Hardy is pitched into a world of crooked cops - former members of the Gun Control Unit - outlaw bikies and honest police trying to clean the stables quietly. Two more murders raise the stakes, and relationships are stretched to the breaking point.

Claudia Fleischman is beautiful, rich, intelligent, and has just been charged with the murder of her husband. Hardy, hired to look into the background of the case, is soon up to his neck in trouble. When his car is blown up and a friend is killed, Cliff finds himself with a personal stake in the action. His investigations introduce him to the shadowy world of corporate high flyers at Sydney's exclusive Washington Club and bring him into contact with loose cannon Haitch Henderson and his soft but unpleasant pimp of a son.

Will one man's loss be Hardy's gain? 'I'd read about it in the papers, heard the radio reports and seen the TV coverage and then forgotten about it, the way you do with news stories.' The police suspect the father, Gerard Fonteyn OA, a wealthy businessman. But he's hired Cliff to find his daughter, given him unlimited expenses and posted a $250,000 reward for information.

The woman was bad news; Cliff knew he shouldn't have taken the case. Now his gun's been stolen, he's wanted by the police and all he has to go on is a mutilated photograph. Cliff Hardy rubs elbows with Sydney's blue bloods in his latest case, involving murder threats received by a woman filing for divorce. The clues explode when the Australian private eye stumbles upon the high society husband and his mistress - just as the house bursts into a fireball. Now Cliff is fighting for his life.

Someone's trying to cancel Cliff Hardy's licence, and he needs to find out why. He also needs to find out why the case of missing schoolteacher Brian Madden keeps leading him back over 50 years to the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Finding the answers takes all his contacts - police, underworld and press - and keeps Hardy moving across Sydney, asking questions, probing the past ... and finding the bodies.

When Cliff Hardy signs on as a bodyguard for charismatic populist Rory O’Hara, who is about to embark on a campaign of social and political renewal, it looks like a tricky job; O’Hara has enemies. Sure enough, a murder and a kidnapping soon cause the campaign to fall apart. Hired to investigate the murder, Hardy uncovers hidden agendas among O’Hara’s staff and powerful political and commercial forces at work.