He may be from Melbourne originally, but writer and filmmaker Tony Cavanaugh has spent an awful lot of time helping put Brisbane on the map. That started when he and his former partner Simone North moved up and made a groundbreaking television series here. Back in 1995 Fire, which screened on Channel 7, was a revelation and setting a series about firefighters somewhere other than Sydney or Melbourne was, well, brave.
With their company, Liberty Films, they used Brisbane as a location for a string of productions. The film partnership ended with the relationship and Cavanaugh, 62, continued dabbling in film (and he still does) but he also turned his considerable talents as a writer to crime fiction.
La promesse, Tony Cavanaugh, traduction Paul Benita, Sonatine, paru le 12/04/2018, 22€
L’année dernière était paru L’affaire Isobel Vine, un polar tranquille (un peu à la Connelly), se déroulant à Melbourne. Premier titre traduit en français de Tony Cavanaugh, nous faisions ainsi connaissance avec Darian Richards, son enquêteur désabusé. Chouette roman, bien ficelé, laissant présager une nouvelle série sympathique.
Last year was the case of Isobel Vine, a thriller (similar to Connelly), taking place in Melbourne. First title translated into French by Tony Cavanaugh, we met Darian Richards, his disillusioned investigator. Nice novel, well put together, suggesting a new series friendly.
“Edgy and stylistically taut from beginning to end, Promise delivers a compelling and richly developed story. It is the kind of book that knowledgeable fans of the genre will love and appreciate.”
Top Homicide cop Darian Richards has been seeking out monsters for too long. He has promised one too many victim’s families that he will find the answers they need, and it’s taken its toll.
After surviving a gunshot wound to the head he calls it quits and retires to the Sunshine Coast in an attempt to leave the demons behind. But he should have realized there are demons everywhere—no place is safe.
Read MoreThere's a touch of Raymond lurking in Tony Cavanaugh's novels, the second of which, Dead Girl Sing is a cracker, though his work owes as much to recent American hardboiled fiction such as that of Robert Crais, Michael Connelly and James Lee Burke.
‘The black novel is mankind driven to madness in a bar or in the dark; it describes men and women whom circumstances have pushed too far, people whom existence has bent and deformed,’ Raymond wrote.
Read MoreI really admire Tony Cavanaugh. Not only is Promise a terrifying crime debut, but it’s set in a place that’s only an hour away from where I live. I can’t imagine it would be easy to take a familiar environment and transform it into a serial killer’s playground, but the setting made it ten times creepier and a whole lot more enjoyable. Disclaimer: Tony Cavanaugh’s subject matter is intense. Not just Dark Places intense, but pedophilia and necrophilia intense. I’ll be honest, I was basically making this face half the time…
Read More'Tony, I want you to make me come.’
It was in the early 1990’s and I was sitting in a restaurant in Santa Monica, Los Angeles, having lunch, with an executive from the Nickelodeon TV network. I was in the process of writing a mini-series called Clowning Around which had been pre-bought by the BBC, ABC in Australia, TF1 in France and Nickelodeon in the US. I was having a script meeting. I was in the middle of eating a Caesar salad when the executive told me about my writing.
Read MoreIT began after an alcohol-fuelled night of madness. Tony Cavanaugh's personal and professional life was in disarray so he took his frustrations out on his mother-in-law's car, bashing it through rugged bush tracks on Noosa's north shore, the untamed wilds across the river from the boutique resort town of Noosa Heads on Queensland's Sunshine Coast.
Read More"Cavanaugh’s writing is tight as a clenched fist" – Fiona Hardy, Readings
Darian Richards is a lost man. A man he has hunted for years has vanished again, presumably overseas. His lover is gone. The Noosa River, the one bank of water that affords him peace, is not doing its job. Early retirement is looking like it is not for him. But then: a visitor to the cabin he has retreated to. Victorian Police Commissioner Copeland Walsh – nicknamed Copland for his dedication – asking for his help. He needs to retire, and be replaced. But his replacement, Nick Racine, has a cloud over his past, involving an unresolved death of an 18-year-old woman in 1990.
Read MoreIt's never about the sex; it's always about the power. Tony Cavanaugh is already known for taking soapies to a smarter level as a TV scriptwriter, but his first novel, about a man who rapes and murders teenage girls, imagines the standard exhibitionist serial killer as a self-aware autodidact with a professorial brain.
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