UBC: Silvester & Rule, Underbelly

Underbelly : A Tale of Two Cities by John Silvester

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


So Underbelly is an Australian true crime television series. I don't know exactly how this book connects to it (I found it in the used book store & picked it up because Australian true crime), so I'm just going to review the book without further reference to the show.

Silvester & Rule have a flippant, ironic, gossip-mag tone which highlights the resemblance of the events they discuss to a gruesome Clockwork Orange soap opera, with complicated and constantly shifting allegiances between drug dealers, hit men, fixers, and police officers (Sydney was breathtakingly corrupt for, apparently, most of the 20th century), most of whom end up either dead or in prison (or one followed by the other). Also, defects of its virtues, it makes the book feel shallow, although it's more than apparent that the authors know the ground they're covering extremely well, mostly through interviews with the various players (Silvester's bio says he's been a crime reporter in Melbourne since 1978).

Not anybody's masterwork, but definitely worth reading.



View all my reviews

comments