AustLit

'What were the 60s & 70s really about?

How authentic were those stoned revolutionaries?

'What if it was all a fraud?

When small-press bibliographer Charles Dorritt recovers from a breakdown by doing a creative writing course, he announces he is publishing his memoirs of torture and sex-slavery at the hands of the security services.

Plant is called to lunch with the arts editor of a metropolitan broadsheet, life style journalist Angela Dark, and political speechwriter Ghostly Sperrit, all of whom seem deeply concerned the revelations should not appear. They hire Plant to have a word with Dorritt, but Dorritt heads off to Byron Bay and Plant pursues him through the dope lands of northern New South Wales.

A past era of magic mushrooms, free love, American friends, and an alternative newspaper of deep level inauthenticity begins to emerge, something that no one but Plant is keen to see revealed.

From the same college but a different school as John Le Carré, Michael Wilding will open your eyes, and darken your mind, with this vision of the not-so-secret world.' (From the publisher's website.)

'Gallery owner Alice Ackerman hires Plant to find her husband, missing in Asia. Plant gets embroiled with the expatriate language teacher Bowles with a penchant for cut-price Bangkok bar-girls, excitable Indian professor Ghosh, a Manila bookseller with impeccable CIA connections, and exotic cabaret singer Anna-Imelda. Drugged and seduced at the Eternal Night Club, kidnapped and imprisoned in Baguio City, PLant is deported from the Philippines. Fired from the case, he is visited in his rural hideaway by the menacing international publisher Starr, whose taste for dangerous sex may be the reason he is later found hanged in a Bangkok hotel. The action moves rapidly through Thailand, India, the Philippines and the Australian Gold Coast.' (Publisher's blurb)

'Suspended from his job when his politically incorrect email correspondence is leaked on the internet, Tim Vicars disappears. Is he hiding in shame?

'Is he running away from the erotic complexities of wife, mistress and literary agent?

'Or has his research project on decriminalizing marijuana provoked the growers, dealers and intelligence agencies to direct action?

'Plant, hired to find him, heads off into the Valley of the Weed.' (Publication summary)

'Little Demon finds investigator Plant back in the iconic paradise of Byron Bay, hired by ageing rock ‘n’ roll journalist Rock Richmond whose computer with his history of the alternative communes has been stolen. Plant's rural retreat is invaded by conspiracy theorist Fullalove, who figures Richmond had been writing about rumoured Cold War arms caches and secret militias. Plant’s inquiries involve Rock's wife, a barrister specialising in drug cases, his girlfriend the mysterious Madimi, and caravan park owner and rifle club president Jake, a former army officer who used to run a commune.' (Publication summary)

'Liz Lambastier was a successful travel writer. Did she write one last, unpublished book before she died? Plant is hired to find out. It soon becomes evident he is not the only one looking. What could the missing manuscript contain? Memories of the past to haunt a few people? Revelations of sexual opportunism or – these days – allegations of sexual harassment? Or, conspiracy theorist Fullalove speculates, undercover work in sensitive places? From poetry wars to the secret state, from old times good time girl Hilly Fann to Sasha her niece in the library, from monstrous media mogul Murray Brittan to Hacker the editor with nothing left to edit, Plant investigates.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.