William Power Series

It’s 1942, and war is raging in Europe and in the Pacific. The Japanese army is on Australia’s doorstep, and the small coastal Queensland town of Maryborough is on full war footing. What they are not prepared for is the arrival in the town of a troupe of incompetent actors whose unjustifiably self-confident leader, William Power, is determined to bring his daring production of Titus Andronicus to the barbarians of rural Australia. Unfortunately for the Power Players, the only gift William Power has is a capacity for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. When a young woman goes missing and is found floating dead in the town’s water supply, Power becomes the prime suspect in her murder. With every misplaced step he takes, he becomes more and more embroiled in a series of crimes which baffle the police and horrify the locals. Having no confidence in the constabulary, Power decides that his only option is to solve the crimes himself. His acting skills are not good; his detection skills are worse. As he stumbles towards a solution and as his injuries mount up, he never wavers in his belief that he alone can bring the killer to justice. But, with every day that passes, he tightens the noose around his own neck until, on the night of a violent storm, everything changes. And not for the better. PRAISE FOR ROBERT GOTT ‘Elegantly rendered in a kind of high literary pastiche, Good Murder is a brilliant debut.’ The Weekend Australian ‘No sooner than our weekend papers have started to pronounce a crisis of Oz Lit than along comes this absolute gem of a debut novel, a comic crime caper of the first order! Gott … has created a fully realised fictional world here that combines careful plotting with a fine sense of pace to deliver a completely satisfying read — and in William Power a most memorable comic creation! And as a wordsmith and stylist Gott has few equals I suspect …’ Readings Newsletter

The fatally over-confident hero of Good Murder returns to pit his meagre detective skills against military intelligence, belligerent in-laws, a town full of G.I.s, and a creepy conspiracy to bring on an Australian sectarian nightmare. Failed Shakespearean actor and would-be private detective William Power returns to Melbourne in disgrace after his disastrous brush with theatre and murder in Maryborough. Bloodied, broken, but somehow unbowed, he arrives in a town struggling under war rationing and full of cocky American soldiers, and lands squarely in the bosom of his childhood home in Carlton — a home now dominated by his sister-in-law, the odious Darlene. But even Will’s contempt is tempered when, in the early hours of the morning, Darlene is kidnapped, and Will finds his mother’s kitchen splattered with blood and scattered with broken crockery. Needing to escape the maternal home and the growing police investigation, Power rents a room in the spacious, Parkville home of wealthy, charismatic, and obsessively neat Paul Clutterbuck and is introduced to his strange society of bohemians, black marketeers, and neanderthal henchmen. Will Power is fascinated but, before he can begin to enjoy his new home, a savage murder is discovered. Just when modesty and good sense threaten to intervene, Will realises that only he can solve the murder and the mystery of his kidnapped sister-in-law, and save the nation from impending catastrophe. A Thing of Blood is a brilliant, wry sequel which perfectly recreates the tension and fear of wartime Australia. PRAISE FOR ROBERT GOTT ‘Rather than the outlandish though entertaining plot, it's the play of these perspectives, the wit and the dissonance between Power's descriptive ability and his self-delusion, that give A Thing of Blood the backbone that keeps you turning the pages … There is much about A Thing of Blood to like and little to dislike (except perhaps Power himself).’ The Sydney Morning Herald ‘A well-designed conspiracy and a tension-fuelled ending provides a rewarding finale to the story. This is the kind of easy beach read type of story with which it is just a pleasure to stick the brain in neutral, kick back and enjoy.’ Australian Crime Fiction Database

Failed Shakespearean actor and would-be private investigator Will Power’s unique detective skills are, once again, in demand. The Japanese army is rampaging through the islands of the South Pacific, and Australia’s front line of defence is a top-secret, crack division of men embedded deep in the tropical wilderness of northern Australia. But something is threatening their vital, covert mission: one of this elite corps is a murderer, preying on his comrades, one by one. With a case too sensitive to be trusted to the police, military intelligence turn to the one man whose singular combination of abilities make him capable of infiltrating the clandestine military operation and rooting out the killer. William Power goes into deep cover, posing as a cheap, vaudeville entertainer on tour to relieve the troops. Enlisting the help of his brother, whose latent skills for female impersonation rise to the occasion, Will soon finds himself in the far-northern outback trying to raise the morale of a group of desperate young soldiers lying in wait for the arrival of Tojo’s army — knowing all the while that one of them is the killer.

‘It was suffocatingly hot, and the audience of howling children was viciously indifferent to the violence being done to my integrity as an artist by every ghastly syllable I was obliged to utter and by every mincing step I was obliged to take. As the foul smell of the ancient wig I was wearing wafted into my nostrils, I began to view the bombing of Darwin with something like nostalgia.’ William Power, actor and sometime private inquiry agent, has returned from the Northern Territory, shaken, stirred, and generally discombobulated. ‘I survived the tropics with my life and my looks intact, despite the best efforts of the flora, fauna, and Military Intelligence to steal both from me.’ It is late 1942, and in what he believes is a demeaning sideshow to the war, he finds himself playing a pantomime dame. If only this was his only worry, but, as his great hero, Shakespeare, noted, ‘When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.’ Can Will finally overcome his tendency to be the living embodiment of Murphy’s Law? PRAISE FOR ROBERT GOTT ‘Aussie comic crime fiction wouldn’t be the same without William Power … an entertaining blend of humour, historical crime, and the world of theatre.’ The Sydney Morning Herald