Coorparoo Blues and the Irish Fandango
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Brisbane, 1943. A provincial Australian city has turned almost overnight into the main Allied staging post for the war in the Pacific. The social, sexual, and racial tensions stirred up by the arrival of tens of thousands of US troops provoke all kinds of mayhem, and Brisbane’s once quiet streets are suddenly looking pretty mean. Enter P.I. Jack Munro, a World War I veteran and ex-cop with a nose for trouble and a stubborn dedication to exposing the truth, however inconvenient it might be for those in charge. He’s not always an especially good man, but he’s the one you want on your side when things look bad. When Jack's hired by a knockout blonde to find her no-good missing husband, he turns over a few rocks he isn't supposed to, and the questions start to pile up, along with the bodies. Not inclined to take no for an answer, he forges on through the dockside bars, black-market warehouses, and segregated brothels of his roiling city, uncovering more than a few surprises in this murky tale based on actual events in a little-known corner of the WW2 theatre.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hard-boiled fans will welcome Australian author Manson's two novellas introducing hard-drinking, hard-loving PI Jack Munro, who has a penchant for championing the underdog on the mean streets of WWII-era Brisbane. In the first, rich and sexy Julia Flowers hires Jack to find her missing husband. Jack gets on a trail that will involve an AWOL U.S. seaman, the murder of two black American soldiers, and a complicated black market scam. Along the way, he discovers a new kind of music the blues. In his second case, local Communists hire Jack to look into the supposed suicide of one of their own, an investigation that touches on Spanish Civil War atrocities, a priest fond of young boys, and IRA partisans. Munro takes beatings and dishes them out with abandon. A brief glossary helps with the Aussie slang.