AustLit

'Traven Collins is a sort of detective. He's not really a detective, more what you might call a burnt-out case who was a writer and now who'll take most any kind of writing job to pay the rent. If it's interesting. He lives in a nice seaside suburb of Melbourne with down-and-outers, stand over merchants and ice addicts at one end and pimps, thieves, hookers and transexual rent boys at the other. Traven takes a job from an old friend to promote the visit of the last American beat poet, Duke Weston, who claims to have been a friend of Kerouac & Burroughs etc. Things are going averagely until the first death – which is seems to be a hit & run but proves to be a murder. And then the next one...that's murder too. Both of the victims were poets. With his trusty sidekick, the brilliant border collie Maynard G Crabs, Traven sets out to make sure he doesn't become embroiled in these murders most foul & most horrid. And he has to protect Lexi, the young lady who couldn't possibly be his daughter - could she? ' (Publication summary)