i hated this for the first 175 pages or so. after that it improved to the point where there were times that i was interested and times that i cared slightly what was happening. but overall this was not my scene and i never once minded putting the book down. it seems to be putting on the costume of noir, but doesn't feel authentic. there are holes everywhere (not actually in the plot, but in what the reader is told); although maybe i wasn't paying close enough attention because i was disliking it so much.

i know that so many of these private investigators drink and drink and drink, but good lord it gets old. (to be fair, maybe it wasn't old when this came out. but still. why this trope??) and the girl trope. i just don't believe any of it. i mean sexual attraction, sure, but actual feelings? please.

it's too racist and homophobic and i know it was written in 1980 but it's just too much. maybe i'm disinclined to forgive him or overlook it because it featured so much and because i didn't like the rest of the book it was couched in.

it did get better (although not less homophobic or racist) eventually and it was always a quick and easy read, so there's that. first 60% of the book is 0-.5 star and the last 40% is 1 star. still not good but it improved. not enough for me to read him ever again, though. ( )

The end of the Cliff Hardy series was announced when WIN, LOSE OR DRAW was released in 2017, and then with the subsequent death of Peter Corris, I made a promise to myself to re-read this excellent series, every year, during the Boxing Day Test, as I'd been doing with every new release.

The problem is I can't count and simple arithmetic defeats me, but even I've now managed to work out that 2020+41 = 2061. As I'm unlikely to still be alive in 2061, I'd better get a move on because I'm determined that I will re-read the Cliff Hardy series from start to finish before I too die. So, with fingers crossed on at least a few years left, that means a minimum of 2 books a year. Might make that 4 just in case.

In 1982 the Commodore 64 8-bit computer was released; Malcolm Fraser was PM and Bill Hayden was Opposition Leader; autobiographer Albert Facey died; the movies Monkey Grip and Running on Empty, as well as Far East were released (starring Bryan Brown who was also in the movie THE EMPTY BEACH, based on the Cliff Hardy novel of the same name); athlete Ian Thorpe was born and THE DYING TRADE was first published.

When Text Publishing re-released THE DYING TRADE in 2012 as part of their "Text Classics" series, they included a quotation from The Age:

‘A quintessentially Australian literary icon.’

That quote sums up the entire Cliff Hardy experience to a tee. Succinct and pointed, as all these novels are, Cliff Hardy is quintessentially Australian. From the Ford he drives, to the city he lives in, the pubs he drinks in, his propensity to wade in where others may have feared to tread, his dry, acerbic wit and laid back style, a propensity (in the early novels) to drink and smoke way too much, and his absolute refusal to age (gracefully or disgracefully). Cliff Hardy was always our Australian lone wolf, and over the 42 books in this series, he indeed became a literary icon.

THE DYING TRADE is an introductory novel. Right from the start it sets a standard that readers came to expect. It's pointed, it's dry, it's observational and it gets on with "it". Whatever "it" is, there are always some givens. Hardy will take a case that he probably shouldn't, he will care, he'll get a thumping along the way, he'll solve the case, he might even get the girl, but he'll lose her again, and he'll return to his small terrace house, park his Ford out the front, open a bottle of wine, stare at the walls and spend a few moments wondering about what could have been. Never long, never drawn out, never overly reflective.

Early 1980's Sydney is a world away from current day Sydney and yet in many ways it's not, and the Hardy series is a testament to the similarities and changes. Hardy is a product of this place, and he inhabits a world that Peter Corris seemed to love, understand and despair of. The descriptive elements of the novels are beautifully done, crisp, pointed, short, sharp, Corris was a master at the art of the precise and the pithy.

It's comforting to go back to the start of such a long series and see that right from the start there's the pattern, the style and the structure that carried forward for so many years. You can also see very clearly, after a long, drawn out battle to get publishers to take note and realise that we needed to hear stories in our own voices, set in our own locations, that they were bloody lucky to get the Cliff Hardy series.

https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/dying-trade-peter-corris ( )

On retrouve Cliff Hardy dans les années 80 ; c’est un détective privé, ex-boxeur, fumeur et aux limites de l’alcoolisme, qui n’est pas le plus prolifique de Sydney. En fait, il n’a pas travaillé depuis déjà un bon moment. La demande d’un riche homme d’affaires d’enquêter sur le harcèlement et les menaces dont sa sœur jumelle est victime arrive à point dans la vie du détective. Mais Hardy est loin de se douter que son enquête le mènera au travers d’évènements tordus et violents. Les enquêtes de Cliff Hardy continuent au sein d’une impressionnante série de 42 tomes.

The Dying Trade is the first in the popular Cliff Hardy series of detective novels, which probably accounts for its revival amongst the wonderful Text Classics range. It introduces Hardy as a fairly conventional tough-guy private investigator caught up in a case involving the carefully suppressed secrets and private battles of a wealthy Sydney clan. The novel was first published in 1980 and shows its age - prices are at rock-bottom, everybody smokes and Hardy repeatedly refers to his female client as 'love'. Despite my growing fondness for crime fiction, I think Cliff Hardy is just a bit too blokey for my taste. ( )