Hammerton is a mining town in West Virginia. Built in a naturally formed crater, it is only accessible via a train tunnel. A mine collapse in the late nineteen forties saw the community reduced to poverty....

Dominated by a federal government, in a three-tier system of government, Australian politics is based on a constitution written in the 1890's that is extremely difficult to change via referendums. It...

Dominated by a federal government, in a three-tier system of government, Australian politics is based on a constitution written in the 1890's that is extremely difficult to change via referendums. It...

A private jet crashes into the hillside above Cairns. Bodies are retrieved and the plane contents are examined. All is not as it should be and Detective Chief Inspector "Sarge" Downs and Detective Sergeant...

While on a holiday Detective Inspector "Sarge" Downs, his partner Sarah, their daughter Katie and Sarge's Uncle Ray accidentally come across a drug trafficking business that has links back to Cairns where...

Just after the birth of his second child, Detective Inspector "Sarge" Downs of the Queensland police based in Cairns receives a mysterious parcel. In it he finds various accounts of the role his grandfather,...

Bernard Wilfred Downs, a Detective Inspector in the Queensland Police force preferred to be called Sarge by everyone. He was called "Young 'un" by his uncle; "Short Arse" by his mates when he was much...

Les Crétineux are an army of misfits that wandered their way around northern Europe in search of employment in medieval times. They head even further north seeking a reward from a supposedly captured...

Coral Voyager, a large cruise ship, is confronted by a storm just of the north Queensland coast. It finally runs aground just south of Cairns. A massive rescue effort gets underway and all passengers...

After the exploits dealing with police corruption, (see "You Don't Say" in the Downs Crime Mystery series) Detective Inspector "Sarge" Downs from Cairns was looking for a break. However, while on a holiday...

In Part 3, Mary Evans is about to graduate from secondary school and enter into university which was not a very common thing for young women during the late 1930's in Melbourne, Australia.She is still...

A somewhat jaded teacher is posted to a one teacher rural school, high up in the mountains in Victoria, Australia. Douglasville was originally a gold mining town and then became a timber town. A series...

A young boy, about to leave the comfort and security of primary school and venture into the teenage world of secondary school, has a very different summer school holiday. Living in the poorest part of...

Detective Inspector "Sarge" Downs of the Queensland police was returning to Cairns when he was witness to the horrific slaying of a young motorbike rider. Cradling the dying young woman in his arms he...

Former Chief Inspector "Sarge" Downs comes out of retirement to work as a private individual attempting to re-unite a young man from Germany with a man who disappeared more than twenty years earlier....

Mary Evans was born in 1920 in Melbourne, Australia. Her father had come home from World War 1 suffering from shell shock and the loss of his leg. When she was only seven, her father finally died. She,...

Detective Inspector "Sarge" Downs uncle is visiting his nephew in Cairns. Ray Downs had adopted Sarge when Sarge was only four after his parents had been killed in a car accident. Ray was normally a quietly...

Growing up on the north west coast of Italy in the mid fifteenth century, a boy is at last able to trace his own history after leaving his idyllic secluded village. Traveling to Lucca, Pisa and on to...

As people age, their perceptions of things around them change. Many older people say that they become more fine tuned. The younger generation think however that means narrower. Silly Old Bugger is a collection...

The fictional character from Between the Wars series Michael Harrington began writing poetry when he first met Mary Evans, a teenage girl he met in the 1930's at a joint school dance In Melbourne, Australia....

Politics in Australia offers up some very strange characters who become even stranger when elected. This book contains parodies of well-known songs about the weird antics that they get up to and the awkward...

Washed up in a storm, a part of a human body leads Detective Inspector "Sarge" Downs and Detective Senior Sergeant Nat Johns of the Criminal Investigation Branch based in Cairns, Queensland down to Melbourne...

Twin brothers on two sides of the world are kidnapped at the same time sparking investigations in both Cairns in Northern Queensland and Inverness in Scotland. Two police forces are joined in trying to...

Mary Evans, having survived living on the streets in Melbourne, Australia in the 1920's with her mother and her brother, has settled into becoming part of the family of the Hansens where her mother now...

A young boy, about to leave the comfort and security of primary school and venture into the teenage world of secondary school, has a very different summer school holiday. Living in the poorest part of...

Dominated by a federal government, in a three-tier system of government, Australian politics is based on a constitution written in the 1890's that is extremely difficult to change via referendums. It...

Over the past twelve years I have been writing parodies of songs to take the mickey out of how seriously Australians take their home grown sport of Australian rules football. Well known songs from the...

Sergeant Downs, or Sarge as he preferred, was minding his own business in the Cairns police station in Far North Queensland, Australia, when a stranger entered his life. Blessed with a photographic memory...

The Queensland police officer based in Cairns, Detective Acting Inspector Bernard Downs, still known as Sarge to all his colleagues, was quickly promoted after his true abilities came to the fore in solving...

Chief Inspector, 'Sarge' Downs of the Cairns police in Queensland, Australia is drawn into the investigation and coroner's inquest following an explosion of an LPG tanker being hauled by a locomotive...