Four Days

BACKGROUND Four Days is a crime novel set in Brisbane during the mid-1980s. The book brings together a number of themes from cultural and literary studies, namely the scarcity of noir themes in Australian crime fiction as well as the low instance of Queensland (particularly Cairns) as a setting within the genre. In addition to which, the novel draws in my work on Queensland's cultural heritage. My scholarly research projects investigating Queensland's music history turned up much of the period detail used in the novel and my choice of a noir tone and theme framed this period of Australian history in ways that speak directly to the political and cultural consequences of this era. The oft-remarked similarity between the book and the work of other revisionist crime writers such as James Ellroy, Ken Bruen and David Peace clearly position the book as a critique of this period. CONTRIBUTION At heart, Four Days is an examination of corruption. A surface reading reveals my research surrounding Queensland police corruption but a closer reading extends the theme into questions of what is inherited, remembered and retained from this moment. This line of enquiry runs directly counter to Queensland's various attempts at rebranding itself, a narrative that aims to cleanly disconnect itself from its past. This is a promotional narrative I have problematised in my academic publications, see Rogers (2008) and Bennett and Rogers (2016), and this novel represents a public-facing attempt to disseminate these ideas. SIGNIFICANCE Four Days saw publication via Portland-based press Broken River Books. It was well-reviewed on release both here and abroad, especially in genre-specific forums. Andrew Nette (editor of Crime Factory journal) called it, 'noir fiction that does justice to the sleaze and corruption of Queensland in the eighties.' More notably, the book was officially short-listed for a Ned Kelly award (Best First Fiction).