The Butcherbird

From one of Australia's leading business executives comes a darkly comic, rambunctiously rollicking novel that charts the rise and fall of a tycoon.


Set in the boardrooms, yachts and waterfront mansions of Australia's most decadent city, The Butcherbird is a boisterous thriller about corruption and excess in the corporate world.


Jack Beaumont, architect turned property developer, is as surprised as the next person when he is approached by insurance tycoon Mac Biddulph to become the new CEO of HOA, the largest home-insurer in Australia. Seduced at first by the lure of power, Jack soon finds that beneath the glamorous facade of the Sydney business elite lies a convoluted network of corruption. Out of his depth and pursued by piranhas in a fish tank full of money, Jack must unravel the elusive threads or become ensnared himself.


Geoffrey Cousins has called upon his own insider experience at the highest levels of Australian business to conjure a darkly comic suspense-filled tale of intrigue peopled by a tantalizingly familiar cast of A-list sharks.