Hollywood. Studio screenwriter Hart Sallust, well known patron of sleazy bars and nightclubs, has disappeared. Peter McVey, private eye, has been hired to find him. In unfamiliar territory, McVey enlists Browning - part-time actor, part-time private eye - at home in any Hollywood bar. From Hollywood bars to the Chinese underworld, their search uncovers the beautiful May Lin. With Sallust when he disappeared, and seemingly inconsolable. Or is she? Her story has 'more holes in it than a flyscreen'.

Mount Perfect Ranges, western Victoria, 1872. Henry Fanshaw has stumbled upon one of the largest nuggets ever found in the colony. But it isn't on his land and Fanshaw's troubles are only just beginning. The gold is stolen and Fanshaw, not able to approach the law, calls upon the services of John 'Black' Perry, a touring pugilist, sharpshooter and horseman, to track the thieves

With his PEA licence restored and strapped for cash, Cliff Hardy is reluctantly drawn into a scheme to claim the reward on a 17 year old abduction case. Hardy is distracted by a hot new lover, but when one of the schemers turns up dead, the case gets his full attention. Who paid the cops to suppress the ransom note and how come they're always one jump ahead of Hardy?

Is brilliant young film maker Carmel Wise the innocent victim of gangland violence or is she enmeshed in a pornography racket as the press and the police imply? Carmel's businessman father hires Cliff Hardy to find the real reason 'the video girl' was shot dead outside the Greenwich Apartments in Kings Cross.

It began as a routine investigation into a supposed drowning. But Cliff Hardy, private detective, soon found himself literally fighting for his life in the murky, violent underworld of Bondi. The truth about John Singer, black marketeer and poker machine king, is out there somewhere - amidst the drug addicts and prostitutes and alcoholics. Hardy's job is to stay alive long enough in that world of easy death to get to the truth. The truth hurts.....

Cliff Hardy in action again: trying to keep one step ahead of his client's trouble - and his own. He goes from sleazy backstreets to boardrooms in skyscrapers - dealing with everyone from fashion models and teenage junkies to urban developers and crooked funeral directors. Some are very friendly, some try to kill him......Hardy copes, with his guts and his savvy; and all for a hundred and twenty-five dollars a day (plus expenses....)

This collection of stories finds Cliff Hardy in his usual milieu of inner Sydney mixing with the good, the bad and the quirky as he works on his cases.

When Oscar Bach's body was found crushed under rubble, his death was classified as another tragic statistic of the Newcastle earthquake. So how could he have been seen alive five minutes after the quake? Who would want this man dead? Oscar's quiet life was not all it appeared to be. He was a man with no apparent past. But something and someone has caught up with him now, and they are trying to stop Cliff Hardy finding the answers....