A client falls from the twentieth storey of a building; a rock star goes missing; an erotic Mongol scroll vanishes; a film star has a problem that has nothing to do with creativity - it's all in a day's work for Cliff Hardy.
It is just another party in Sydney's eastern suburbs, a routine security job for Cliff Hardy. It leads, though, to an interesting meeting and a dangerous job.
Politician Peter January is having trouble staying alive so he hires Cliff Hardy to help him. Hardy dislikes the role of politician's 'security consultant' but he dislikes bombers, hit men and hatemailers even more.
The early 1980s found Cliff Hardy well established as a private investigator but still battling his demons. He has quit smoking and moderated his drinking. The memory of his brief marriage still haunts him along with other ghosts from his past.
Cliff Hardy is stony broke, which makes it hard to resist a job from the man he's been losing money to. Ted Tarleton is a rich bookie with a beautiful, spoiled daughter who's gone missing, and Ted wants Hardy to find her. Her boyfriend is no help, and Hardy faces opposition from all sides as he delves into the increasingly violent wreckage of Noni's past.
Lady Catherine presides over the declining fortunes of the Chatterton estate, which is lacking a suitable heir. When she hears of a grandson she never knew, Cliff Hardy takes the job, reluctantly, of finding him. From the run-down boarding houses of Darlinghurst to the social set of Canberra, Hardy finds the case forcing him into some of the strangest roles a private detective has ever had to play.
Casinos are not to Cliff Hardy's liking, nor is wearing a suit and tie, which is why he turns down the job of head of security at a new Sydney gambling establishment. However, when his friend Scott Galvani takes the job and is then murdered, Hardy feels bound to investigate in the face of police indifference. He takes the security job, meets the attractive but unpredictable Vita Drewe, and adds to his list of enemies.
I was starting to get interested. As someone who thinks stockmarkets, futures trading and currency speculation ought to be illegal, I was aware that I was radically out of step with the times. I dimly grasped what Marriott was saying, enough to understand that it sounded like being allowed into the mint with a U-haul van.'
The life of a private investigator is seldom plain sailing, and it certainly doesn't help when someone unknown is trying to cancel your licence. Cliff Hardy needs to find out why, and he also needs to get to the bottom of the case of missing schoolteacher Brian Madden.
Cliff Hardy starts out to help a friend but before long he's looking for an enemy - William Mountain: boozer, TV scriptwriter, would-be novelist who is missing and searching for adventure. Mountain's adventure is Hardy's 'case' which rapidly becomes a case he would rather not have. Mountain is the dealer in a deadly game and the hands he deals become more and more bizarre.
Gareth Greenway wasn't all he seemed, but Cliff Hardy was used to that. What he wasn't used to was the shadowy world Greenway leads him into: neurosurgeons, mental patients, AIDS sufferers, all negotiating a landscape of dreams and delusions. An old friend of Hardy's ends up dead while Hardy chases the shadows, catching some, losing others. The accompanying stories find Hardy on more familiar ground. When organized crime, political corruption, and the Australian army are involved, Hardy battles the odds. But when it comes to a man-to-man contest, put your money on Hardy to win.
