The Big Whatever

Billy Glasheen #4

by Peter Doyle, Lucy Sante (Introduction)

When Billy Glasheen picks up a trashy paperback he finds in his cab, its plot seems weirdly familiar. One of the main characters is based on him . . . Only one person knows enough about his past to have written it—Max, his double-crossing ex-partner in crime. But Max is dead. He famously went up in flames, along with a fortune in cash, after a bank heist. If Max is somehow still alive, Billy has a score to settle. And if he didn’t get fried to a crisp, maybe the money didn’t either. To find out, Billy has to follow the clues in the strange little book—and rapidly discovers he’s not the only one on Max’s trail.

The Big Whatever is the fourth instalment of Peter Doyle’s acclaimed series, which has grown into an epic underground history of postwar Australia, where crooks, entertainers, scammers, corrupt cops and politicians all rub shoulders, chasing their big paydays.

Genres: Crime, Fiction, Mystery

320 pages, Paperback

First published April 7, 2015

About the author

Peter Doyle was born in Maroubra, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. He worked as a taxi driver, musician, and teacher before writing his first book, "Get Rich Quick", which won the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Crime Novel. He has published two further books featuring protagonist Billy Glasheen, "Amaze Your Friends" and "The Devil’s Jump", and a fourth, "The Big Whatever", is slated for publication in October 2014. He is also the author of the acclaimed "City of Shadows: Sydney Police Photographs 1912–1948" and "Crooks Like Us". In 2010 Doyle received the Ned Kelly Lifetime Achievement Award.

Reviews

[John Chandler]

A cracking good caper novel set amongst Australia's emerging bohemian counter culture of the 1960s. Hippie musicians, drug dealers, radical activists and vengeful gangsters collude and collide, trying to bang out a big score. Razor-keen dialogue, double crosses, and doomed romances are all expertly handled by one of the best noir voices in the business. Highly recommended!

[Andrew]

Hold the phone, Billy Glasheen is back. Fans of Peter Doyle's outrageously great crime series chronicling the underworld life of Sydney and other parts of Australia through the 50s and 60s have waited 14 years for the next instalment. It has been worth the wait - Billy Glasheen has navigated life through the 1960s and in 1973 is driving a taxi when he discovers a paperback novel in the glovebox. As he reads it, he realises the book is about him and his former running partner Max Perkal, believed dead for the past 4 years, literally incinerated along with a large amount of cash, a large share of which was Bill's. Glasheen has pressing issues that could benefit from his original cut - among them paying off the Greeks and Abe Saffron, as well as his ex-wife and 2 kids. So Bill follows the clues left in the book and pieces together Max's movements, quickly discovering he's not the only lag on Max's tail. Told with Doyle's acerbic wit and authentic lingo, wrapped around the real-life events of the Vietnam peace marches, and rise of Whitlam's Labor government, with more twists than a ballroom night on the RSL club floor. Brilliant, just brilliant.

[Jennifer (JC-S)]

‘The taxi was outside the Professor’s house as usual, the motor ticking as it cooled.’

Having made the transition into the 1970s, Billy Glasheen leads a comparatively quiet life. Billy keeps a low profile: he has kids, he’s in debt, and he augments his cab driving income with a few low-level rackets. Boring and predictable.

Then one day Billy picks up a paperback he finds in the cab and starts reading. The plot of ‘Highway to Hell’ seems familiar to Billy: one of the main characters seems to be based on him. Billy reads on. There’s only one person who knows enough about Billy’s past to have written it, but Max (his ex-partner in crime) is dead. Max went up in flames along with a fortune in cash after a bank robbery in 1969, didn’t he? If Max isn’t dead, then Billy wants to find him. He has a score to settle.

Does ‘Highway to Hell’ contain the clues Billy needs to track down Max? Billy starts to follow the clues in the book and quickly finds that he’s not the only one in search of Max. His journey takes him through northern Victoria and western New South Wales, and brings him in contact with some interesting people.

This novel held my attention from beginning to end. The book within a book works particularly well as a mechanism for delivering this story. Billy follows the clues while we learn about the past. Following the clues in ‘Highway to Hell’ takes Billy back into the past, the club scene in Sydney, a series of unfortunate events in Melbourne and places in between. As Billy shifts from his low-key low- profile existence to try to track down Max, plenty of people seem to be interested in what he is doing.

I discovered, when I started reading this novel, that it is the fourth in a series featuring Billy Glasheen. While the novel worked fine for me as a standalone read, I’m going to track down the other three (‘Get Rich Quick’, ‘Amaze Your Friends’, and ‘The Devil’s Jump’).

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

[Anne-Maree]

Volume 4 of the Billy Glasheen series is a time machine. It has multiple entry keys, depending on: mood; style of clothes; memory of old friends & lovers; background music; certain streets and their houses; and the politics of the seasons, that drag on or change overnight. It starts as a ordinary night for our hero and wheel man, Bill, who finds a mysterious novel, in his taxi's glove box, and takes off, Big Time, on a tour, not only of the streets of Sydney, but of most of eastern Australia. The date hurtles between 1973, and back to '69, retooling and retelling lots of colourful details in between.

The version according to Bill, soon gets swamped by the tales of mad Max Perkal, who is Billy's dark shadow, his Mister Hyde, if you like that kind of thing. This is pulp, that turns to epic, and back again. It is for the time when the glass slipper or cowboy boot fits and you can dance, for when you smell or hear something familiar and follow your senses to a place that contains magic and reality in equal measure. A rich, delicious and hilarious feast. Highly recommended.

[Philip Hunt]

I really wanted to like this more, but it wore me down. The plot is clever and there are two books in one here (part of the plot). So two voices to contend with, which I didn't mind. But in the second half of the book, the main character plays his cards so close to his chest that I lost track of the plan. It all comes together in the end satisfactorily, but en route, I got a bit tired. Quite a writer, though!

[Paul]

3.5*

[Sara Goldenberg]

Did not hold my interest.

[Karen]

Music and popular culture provide the backdrop to this long-awaited new Billy Glasheen novel

Full review at: http://newtownreviewofbooks.com.au/2015/07/30/crime-scene-peter-doyle-th...

[Khee]

Didn't love this as much as I loved 'get rich quick'. I found the novel within the novel a bit annoying, partly because Doyle got the awkward old-fashioned hipness of that era's pulp fiction so right - ya dig? I appreciated the concept more than I enjoyed the reading of it. Still, it's grown up historic Australian crime fiction, and I can't complain about that.

[Malcolm Frawley]

I have really enjoyed following Peter Doyle's leading man, Billy Glasheen, through the seedy underworld of both Sydney & Melbourne in the 1950s, 1960s & now 1970s. This book's conceit is clever & also provides Doyle with the opportunity to write 2 books instead of 1. Billy, working as a taxi driver, finds a battered paper-back in the glove box of the cab he shares & is staggered to discover it is about (criminal) events that he himself was involved in. There's even a character based on him. The apparent author is an ex-friend & colleague who supposedly died in a car accident inferno many years ago. The book written by Max/Mel is the Hollywood version of what went down & Doyle captures the stylistic differences between his 2 narrators very effectively. If you're a fan of Raymond Chandler you might identify 1 of Doyle's influences, but you might also enjoy this series. But start @ the beginning with Get Rich Quick.