Coorparoo Blues & The Irish Fandango

Hard-boiled fans will welcome Australian author Manson’s two novellas introducing hard-drinking, hard-loving PI Jack Munro, who has a penchant for championing the underdog on the mean streets of WWII-era Brisbane. In the first, rich and sexy Julia Flowers hires Jack to find her missing husband. Jack gets on a trail that will involve an AWOL U.S. seaman, the murder of two black American soldiers, and a complicated black market scam. Along the way, he discovers a new kind of music—the blues. In his second case, local Communists hire Jack to look into the supposed suicide of one of their own, an investigation that touches on Spanish Civil War atrocities, a priest fond of young boys, and IRA partisans. Munro takes beatings and dishes them out with abandon. A brief glossary helps with the Aussie slang. (June)