Book Review: “The Big Score” – Down these Mean Aussie Streets

Corris, P. (2007) The Big Score: Cliff Hardy Cases

Peter Corris is an Australian author of very very many books (with a relatively small book market, if you want to pay the bills, you have to pursue a high volume low margins strategy). One of his mainstays is the Private Eye Cliff Hardy. Based in Sydney, Hardy is the ‘typical’ private eye- good with the ladies, good with his fists, clever enough and tenacious.
Corris writes well, with rarely a wasted word, and the plots are usually satisfyingly devious without being ludicrous. There have been many many novels in the Hardy series and a few collections of short stories.
Short stories can of course be much harder to write – you have to pack plot, people and punches into ten or twenty pages. Corris is good at this too. The Big Score, a 2007 collection of 11 stories has no dogs and a some stand out stuff. One story “The Worst case scenario” -in which Hardy is ‘responsible’ for something awful – is a retread of a much earlier story, but nonetheless excellent Hardy also tracks down missing children, investigates the mysterious post-tournament behaviour of a rising tennis star and much else.
I whipped through these stories in top speed, but I am heading back to the library for more… My PhD supervisors can wait… 😉