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)

'Story's Crossing, a small country town where the train doesn't stop anymore, & the highway bypasses the town. Inner Urban Man, Traven, was raised here. The place that formed him, the place that nearly doomed him.

'Traven knew he'd never return but a chance turn on a road to somewhere else, and here he is.

'The old town looks the same as he steps down... yeah, right! No, something is rotten and Traven isn't looking for trouble but trouble has a mind of its own... Old love, old betrayal, and you can't go home again. Murder will out, brussel sprout. Yadda yadda...

'Has Traven been cast as the Small Town Hamlet? That is the Question... now read on...'

Source: Publisher's blurb.