Click on the image above to see a map of Sydney showing famous crime locations. Then click on any blue marker to find out more.
Sydney in Ferment: crime, dissent and official reaction 1788 – 1973 (pub. 1977) This is one for the scholars, an excellent and tightly written history of Sydney crime by an American academic. Also helpful for any writer engaging with historical crime fiction, not least because it reminds us that what… Keep Reading
Extraordinary story of Sef Gonzales, a young man who killed his parents and sister in 2001 in their home at North Ryde. The Gonzales family were immigrants from the Philippines. Sef’s motive was that due to poor results at university, his disappointed parents had threatened to remove his car and disinherit… Keep Reading
The following is taken from the publisher’s website. It will be updated with original text when time permits, but we thought it important to have a reference to this seminal book on the site. Huckstepp investigates the murder of the charismatic young woman who has fascinated Australians since she first… Keep Reading
Important book about the disappearance of Juanita Nielsen on 4 July 1975. Very good on her own background and also that of property developer Frank Theeman, whose endeavours she was opposing. Nielsen’s disappearance was a seminal event in Sydney’s criminal history, because it shocked the city and drew attention to… Keep Reading
Story of master shoplifter Arthur “The Duke” Delaney and the gangs of Australian shoplifters who laid waste the fashionable retail precincts of London and the Continent in the late 1960s, when shoplifting was far more profitable, and far easier, than it soon became (even George Freeman was a shoppie in his… Keep Reading
After the great success of The Prince and the Premier, David Hickie was contacted by Chow Hayes who invited him to write his biography.Hayes was one of Sydney’s top standover men during the 1930s, 40s and 50s, and killed a number of other criminals. For three years Hickie visited Hayes once… Keep Reading
Fascinating biography of famous Sydney inner city cop from the period 1938 to 1976. Farrell was a highly successful sportsman – he represented Australia in rugby league – and a big, violent man who used his fists, and sometimes his teeth, to impose justice on his beat. In many ways… Keep Reading
Doyle’s four-book series about knockabout Billy Glasheen is set in the period from the 1940s to the early 1970s. The attention to detail is impressive and Doyle’s lippy character, world weary and cool, has proved popular, with the novels winning several awards. The Big Whatever is set in a time – the late 1960s and… Keep Reading
In the 1990s Peter Robb wrote two novellas set all or partly in Sydney, Final Cut (1995) and Pig’s Blood. These have been published both alone and in the volume Pig’s Blood and Other Fluids, which also contains his Brazil novella Lime Juice. The novellas are all just 25,000 words in… Keep Reading
Killick is a career criminal and jailbird, best known for escaping from Silverwater prison in 1999 in a helicopter hijacked at gunpoint by his girlfriend Lucy Dudko. This book covers his life only to 1973 and is a boring record of a typical criminal’s life, with a sometimes violent childhood… Keep Reading
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