Peter Corris books

Anthologies

Cliff Hardy Reading Order

Cliff Hardy Collections Reading Order

Luke Dunlop Reading Order

Non-Fiction

Ray Crawley Reading Order

Richard Browning Reading Order

Standalone Novels

Peter Corris (1942-2018) was an Australian historian, journalist, and novelist who published over 100 books during his career. He earned a PhD in Pacific history from the Australian National University before turning to fiction, and his academic work on the South Seas Islander labor trade informed his early non-fiction. When he published The Dying Trade in 1980, introducing private detective Cliff Hardy, he changed the landscape of Australian crime writing.

The Cliff Hardy series ran for more than 35 years and over 40 novels. Hardy is a Maroubra-born, ex-army, law-school-dropout-turned-private-eye who works out of Sydney’s Glebe. The books are gritty, fast-paced, and soaked in the texture of Sydney’s streets. Beyond Hardy, Corris wrote the Ray Crawley spy series, the comic Richard Browning adventures, the Luke Dunlop young adult trilogy, standalone novels, and a large body of non-fiction including biographies and true crime.

Corris was often called the godfather of Australian crime fiction, and the label stuck because it was accurate. He brought an American hardboiled sensibility to Australian settings and made it work. His memoir Damned If I Do, published in 2013, covered his life in writing with the same directness that marked his fiction.