Paydirt (Wyatt Novel) [Paperback]

Garry Disher (Author)

Book Description

Series: Wyatt Novel | Publication Date: April 1993

Set in the South Australian outback, this novel continues the adventures of master thief Wyatt, first introduced in the author's earlier novel, "Kickback". In this novel, the Sydney mob has hired a bitter ex-policeman to kill Wyatt. The author is also editor of the "Personal Best" anthologies.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Published concurrently with Kickback (see above), this title is the second in the Wyatt series. The masterful thief eyes a payroll in the South Australian outback but faces opposition from the Sydney mob.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 180 pages
• Publisher: Allen & Unwin (April 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1863731970
• ISBN-13: 978-1863731973
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,994,477 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Garry Disher lives in Australia and is the author of over 40 books: novels, short story collections, writers' handbooks, history textbooks and children's fiction. His Challis and Destry police procedurals, and his Wyatt crime from the inside thrillers, are gaining international recognition, winning best crime novel of the year awards in Australia and Germany and appearing on best books of the year lists in the USA. Garry has toured Germany twice and the States once, and counts a scholarship year spent in the Stanford University creative writing school, early in his career, as one of his most important formative experiences.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Westlake worthy, May 19, 2002

By 

Orrin C. Judd "brothersjudddotcom" (Hanover, NH USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Paydirt (Wyatt Novel) (Paperback)

Despite all the intellectual disdain for American culture, there are a number of great literary genres that are distinctly American, among them the hard-boiled detective and crime noir story. In fact, it seems not too much of a stretch to say that the prose and story-telling styles of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler were as influential, or more so, than those of any of the more high-toned literary icons of the 20th Century, with the added distinction that folks who tried to like them actually produced readable books, while those who tried to write like Joyce, Woolf, and Faulkner generally produced drek.

Strangely enough though, two of the best current practitioners in these genres are Australian. The Cliff Hardy series by Peter Corris is among the select company of great homages to Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, while the Wyatt novels by Garry Disher are probably the best crime series since Donald Westlake's Parker books (written under the pseudonym of Richard Stark) of thirty and forty years ago. From the one word name of the antihero to the problems with the "Outfit" (organized crime), the Wyatt stories actually quite resemble Westlake's.

Here's Disher's description of his protagonist :

Wyatt was forty years old. Respectable men his age were marking time until their retirement. The hard men his age were dead or in gaol.
Wyatt was different. He'd never been burdened by doubt, uncertainty or personal ties. He worked from an emotionless base. He could
cut to the essentials of a job and stamp his cold hard style on it.

He needs to be cold and hard in this, his second, caper, as he's being hunted by the Outfit after crossing them up in the first book; he's trying to pull a payroll job in the unfamiliar surroundings of Belcowie, three hours north of Adelaide; and he's got untested partners, including a woman, violating one of his own rules.

The language is terse, the action brisk and brutal, and the book terrific. Cover blurbs for such novels always refer to them as realistic. I suspect the opposite is actually true. Thankfully there aren't many criminals as smart and emotionless as Wyatt, otherwise we'd all be in trouble.

GRADE : A

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mystery called Paydirt, March 9, 2000

By 

Carol King (Kansas City MO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Paydirt (Paperback)

Speaking as an American who has lived in Australia for 2 years, I can say this is authentic and I felt as if I were Down Under with these pure Australian characters, the town, and scenes along the highways. This adventure mystery kept me cheering for the main character and feeling a part of it, as it quickly kept revealing clue after clue. Americans will have no trouble understanding the book as there is no obscure Australian terminology, AKA Aussie slang. Compare this mystery to Garry Disher's "Kickback" written in 1991.