Noakes
Created by John Baxter (1939 --)

Sydney, Australian would-be P.I. NOAKES makes do with repo work and the occasional strong arm bit, biding his time for a real case. But he's no stranger to trouble, having just out of the slammer, after serving a year for beating up a cop.

The "ex-con, movie buff and tattoo scholar" with a "disposition somewhere between a turnip and a taipan" made one book-length appearance, 1993's Bondi Blues, and it's supposedly quite a nasty little read. It was cobbled together from three magazine novelets:.Noakes goes to work for a Sydney gangster Alan Hucker and, after tanging with assorted crooked cops, homicidal monsignors and some strumpet's ghost, finds himself in a glitzy Los Angeles cathouse

The author grew up in rural Australia and almost from the beginning was obsessed with books eventually giving in to his compulsions and becoming a professional book hunter, a journey detailed in his 2004 memoir A Pound of Paper: Confessions of a Book Addict. Noakes has never reappeared, but the author hason to write several books on Hollywood's A-list, including Robert DeNiro and George Lucas.

UNDER OATH

• ."Hardboiled as all hell ... and sometimes really funny"
  Stuart Coupe

SHORT STORIES

• "Bondi Blues"
• "Nobdy Cares"
• "Running Dead"

NOVELS

• Bondi Blues (1994) ....Buy this book

Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.