Showing results by author "Robert G. Barrett" in All Categories

A wonderful selection of classic Christmas poetry from G. K. Chesterton, Henry Vaughan, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Burns, Lord Tennyson, and many more.

Robert G Barrett's Rosa-Marie's Baby is action, romance, and intrigue with a diabolical twist. Set in Melbourne, Lorne and Apollo Bay, Victoria, it proves once again why Robert G Barrett is called the king of popular Australian fiction.

The Tesla Legacy, set in Newcastle, Muswellbrook, Scone and the mysterious Burning Mountain in New South Wales, is an action-packed, pace-driven thriller woven with intrigue and a delightful touch of humour and romance, and an ending guaranteed to send chills down your spine.

An amusing, often outrageous, collection of the best columns Robert G.Barrett wrote for People magazine, focusing on Australian life and its heroes and villains. Together these columns represent an often funny, always entertaining and uniquely telling assessment of modern-day Australia.

All easy-going butcher Bob Davis wanted after his divorce was to get on with his job, have a few beers with his mates, and be left alone. But this was Sydney in the early Eighties-the beginnings of the AIDS epidemic, street gangs, gay bashings and murders. When a gang of skinheads bash Davo's old school- friend to death simply because he was gay, and leave Davo almost dead in an intensive care unit, they unleash a crazed killer onto the city streets.

Robert G. Barrett is a self-confessed antagoniser of the literary elite and a master of political incorrectness. For more than a decade now, Robert G. Barrett has been entertaining Australians with the cocky Queenslander Les Norton and his outrageous exploits.

It isn't every day you help murder someone with poison in an illegal casino, whisk his body halfway across town in a Rolls Royce after robbing him, then bury his body in tonnes of concrete underneath an international airport - all more or less with the co-operation of two detectives. Les Norton is back in town! Trouble seems to follow Les like a blue heeler after a mob of sheep. Maybe it's his job - being a bouncer at the infamous and illegal Kelly Club in Kings Cross isn't exactly the stuff a quiet life is made of.

Les Norton's in town and he feels like dancing. Extreme Polo. The wildest game on water. That's what it said on TV. All Les had to do was drive down to Wagga Wagga for an old mate who owed him a favour, Neville (Nizegy) Nixon, and pick up the Murrumbidgee Mud Crabs. Then keep them at Coogee till they played the Sydney Sea Snakes in the grand final at Homebush Aquatic Centre. And naturally there would be a giant earn in it for him. Why not? Thought Les, he had the week off from work.

Arranging the hit on Fabio was a low act, and Les knew it. And when you get Sydney's deadliest killer to do the hit, there's always a quid pro quo. In this case, Les had to take a trip to Nimbin to help an old army mate of Eddie Salita's open a bar, the Double L Ranch. Which suited Les, since he had to take his friend Tony Nathan to the waxhead wedding of the year at Bluey's Beach, and it was on the way. The waxhead wedding of the year turned into the ethnic brawl of the decade.

Moving into his old flame Susie's flat in Bondi should have been a piece of cake for Les Norton - except that Price and Eddie had other ideas. There were two bodies buried under the handball courts at the Bondi baths. The man to get them out? Major Garrick Lewis, aka, The Gecko. With Norton for company, The Gecko literally took Bondi, and everything that went with it, in stride - Mossad hit squads, the KGB, ASIO, yobbo builders and loose women looking for action. And for once, Les is flat out keeping up.

All it took was a summer's day and a flat tire on his push-bike, and Les is out on bail and on the run from a gun-happy street gang intent on a drive-by. So, with Warren's help, Les Norton defendant, becomes Len Gordon film director, safely ensconced at the ultra-swish Opal Springs Health Resort till Eddie can sort things out back in Sydney.

Okay, so it looks like the Kelly Club is finally closing down - it had to happen sooner or later. And it isn’t as if Les Norton will starve. He has money snookered away, he owns his house, and his blue-chip investment - a block of flats in Randwick - must be worth a fortune by now. Except that the place is falling down, the council is reclaiming the land, there’s been a murder in Flat 5, and the tenants are the biggest bunch of misfits since the Manson family.

Just when everything was going so good, Les slips a disc in his back. He can't run, he can't train. He can't do anything much. But he can still drive his car. So it's down to Narooma for the South Coast Blues Festival and a bit of R&R: 30 bands and three days and nights of non-stop rock 'n' roll. Which would have been great, only Les has to have a slight altercation with four fishermen on his first night in town. Now the toughest, meanest, most horrible bloke on the south coast is after his blood.

Les is quite happy resting up after the flu when Warren has to tip him into an earn. Norton's mate from the Albanian Mafia, Bodene Menjou, is planning to make the most politically correct movie ever made in Australia, Gone With the Willy Willy, and has a script stolen. If Les can find it, a lazy $50,000 could fall in. How can Norton say no?

Norton's old friend turned out to be the biggest brothel owner in America. Madam to the stars. Through her, Les met Mitzi Moonkiss; he also met the Japanese Yakuza, lesbian geisha girls and every time he put his head out the door some boofhead US Marine was looking for a fight. And these were all the nice people. Somewhere in the middle a crazed serial killer was on the loose with a bayonet. Aloha, Les.

Les always wanted to visit Port Stephens. And nobody liked Fishcake Fishbyrne that much anyway. The first night in town, Les gets arrested by the federal police then collared by a drug-crazed, feminist author. The hit turned out to be a complete nightmare. Next thing, it's a night drive into Newcastle with Eddie to sort out a team of local heavies. Somehow in the middle of all this Les meets Digger.

Norton needed a holiday - anywhere - as long as it was out of Bondi. Price was only too willing to oblige - Les could have his house at Terrigal. All he had to do was look after George Brennan's nephew for a week while he was there. Sounded okay to Norton, and it was better than spending his own money. Jimmy Rosewater was young, cool and the original brown-eyed handsome man. He loved good wine, going to restaurants, going line-dancing, and the ladies loved him. This suited Les nicely.

What should have been a quick gig on a radio station followed by a white-water rafting holiday in Cairns finishes up a mud-soaked four-wheel drive trip to Cooktown with Norton looking for two missing scuba divers. The army, the air force and half the Queensland water police couldn't find the two missing divers - so what chance does Les have? Along the way Les bumps into a kooky little space cadet who spends her time chasing UFOs and predicting the future, man-eating crocodiles, heat and humidity, and strangers everywhere out for his blood.

There's no two ways about Les Norton - the carrot-topped country boy who works as a bouncer at Sydney's top illegal casino. He's tough and he's mean. He's got a granite jaw, fists like hams, and they say the last time he took a tenner from his wallet Henry Lawson blinked at the light. Lethal but loyal, he's always good for a laugh. In this, the third collection of Les Norton adventures, Les gets his boss off the hook. But not without the help of the boy from Binjiwunyawunya. Les then finds himself in a spot of bother in Long Bay Gaol then in a lot more bother on a St. Kilda tram in Melbourne.

Les figured by tossing $50,000 into the Gull's movie he'd become the next Sam Goldwyn. Only someone put a bomb on the film set. And who gets the blame? Now Norton's a fugitive from the law, desperate to prove his innocence. Satanists, drug dealers, nutty poets, blabbermouth disc jockeys – everybody between Sydney, the Blue Mountains and South Australia wants a piece of Les Norton.