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 length – a stipulation of the Autopsy imprint under which they were originally published.
Final Cut appeared not long after the smash hit Midnight in Sicily and, like the succeeding fiction, attracted few readers. The back cover of the original version described the contents as a “lusty novel … packed with raw love and lurid adventure, told in the real language of today.”
As a group the novellas are terse, bursting with energy, intelligent, dark and sometimes very funny, head and shoulders above almost all other crime fiction set in the city.
Had they been produced in – and about – New York or Rome they would be cult hits. It says a great deal about Sydney that they have been largely ignored and are now out of print, except for an ebook version.
“You can fuck without smashing the furniture. A lot of people do.”
from Final Cut
Note: This entry is what Wikipedia would call a “stub”, the brevity due solely to lack of time. We would welcome more words, from author, publisher or admirers, which can be sent by way of the email address at the foot of our home page.
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