I'm not sure if a book can be forgotten, if you, dear reader, have never heard of it.
Australia has long produced some excellent crime fiction writers.
One of those was Sydney Hobson Courtier (1904-1974), born in Victoria, and the author of 23 novels published 1956 - 1975.
Courtier created 2 detectives: Digger Haig was one of them.
DEATH IN DREAMTIME: a mystery of masks & ciphers was published by Australia's Wakefield Press, and indeed is still available.
I read DEATH IN DREAMTIME, originally published in London in 1959, and republished by Wakefield Crime Classics in 1993, in 1996.
Blurb
‘I’m on to a filthy game. A game worse than murder.’ His cousin’s baffling SOS sends Jack Corless speeding hundreds of miles north to Ungimillia, home of The Alchera or Dreamtime Land. In the shadows of the spectacle he finds murder and intrigue, but everywhere illusion and reality seem to merge, and even Inspector ‘Digger’ Haig can’t quite read the signs.
You may have heard of some of the authors whose work has been preserved by Wakefield Crime Classics: Charlotte Jay, A.E. Martin, and Patricia Carlon.
Try reading it at Google Books.
Kerrie - Thanks for this. As you guessed, I wasn't familiar at all with Courtier's work, but now I'm interested. I always like discovering new authors - well, new to me.
ReplyDeleteLoved Carlon but the rest are unfamiliar. What a shame.
ReplyDeleteIntriguing. Almost sounds like a Tony Hillerman novel.
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