Cities and books group: Australian cities

I found myself looking at the group The City and the Book and noticed that there were no entries for Australian cities. I added one for Melbourne because I knew of an easy answer — almost anything by Kerry Greenwood. Can any Australian LTer add some more, for Melbourne or elsewhere in Australia? I'd particularly like a few for my own city, Brisbane.

>1 haydninvienna: Books that I have enjoyed, and particularly recognized the inner urban Melbourne are The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, The Lost Dog, Power Without Glory, and On the Beach, but I'm not sure how well they reflect the current city.

If it's fiction you are after George Johnston's My Brother Jack is set in 1930's-40's Melbourne.

Fergus Hume's classic The Mystery of a Hansom Cab is set in 19th century Melbourne.

Many of Garry Disher's crime novels are set in Melbourne and surrounds, for example Under the Cold Bright Lights. If crime's your thing also Geoffrey McGeachin's St Kilda Blues (1960's Melbourne). Also try Peter Temples crime novels.

And as Ava Gardner is reputed to have said, Melbourne's a good place for a film about the end of the world On the Beach (Neville Shute).

Brisbane - Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton; Tirra Lirra by the River by Jessica Anderson

Darwin - Maestro by Peter Goldsworthy

Newcastle - The Long Prospect by Elizabeth Harrower

Canberra - Bulldozed by Niki Savva

Sydney - The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty

Melbourne - The Spare Room by Helen Garner

Perth - Cloudstreet by Tim Winton

>2 rodneyvc: >3 Bushwhacked: >4 pamelad: >5 pamelad: I trust you won't mind if I create the appropriate threads in The City and the Book and add these.

>4 pamelad: I feel like I ought to disallow books on politics for Canberra though — if we start down that track there's no end to it. (I suspect that you and I and Nikki Savva all feel much the same about ScoMo and his immediate predecessors.)

>6 haydninvienna: Feel free to create the threads.

Disallow?

Ballarat - The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka by Clare Wright; The Fortunes of Richard Mahoney by Henry Handel Richardson

Adelaide - Three Dog Night by Peter Goldsworthy

>6 haydninvienna: No problem here with creating more threads. I haven't suggested any non-fiction, but can do so if there's an interest. My interest though is mainly historical.

>9 Bushwhacked: Nothing to stop you putting suggestions direct into The City and the Book. I’m doing it mainly because as I said I didn’t see why Portland Oregon had a thread but Melbourne didn’t.

>7 pamelad: Not being serious. Just that there must be hundreds of books about the workings of Canberra (I could contribute one or two myself, such as The Whitlam Mob by Mungo MacCallum). If we start putting them in, the thread will never end. I just noticed that there's no thread for Washington either. That I am definitely not going to create.

>8 pamelad: At last, one for Adelaide.

I wouldn't bet that any of the new threads show much activity, but I didn't see any good reason why St Louis and Portland should be there when Sydney and Melbourne weren't.

>11 haydninvienna: The task thus remains to find an appropriate work of fiction set in our beloved capital!

Canberra - Smoke and Mirrors by Kel Robertson

>13 pamelad: It appears we have a winner! ... and only $10 'used' at Book Grocer!

I just recently finished Trust by Chris Hammer which is set in Sydney - unlike the other two in the trilogy which are set in fictional small towns.

Sydney also features in the Akashic Noir Sydney Noir - and that provides a gimme for The City and The Book given that this collection has nearly 80 books that are mostly {City Name} Noir as a title

Cheers