Crime pays. Or it did for Australian fiction writers when reading was a major form of entertainment. From the colonial era, local magazines and newspapers employed crime writers whose work was often published in serial form.

Eileen Davitt, Mary H Fortune, aka Waif Wanderer, and other colonial lady writers abandoned genteel romance and fluffy kittens to explore the darker side of human nature.

In the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, Australian expatriate Guy Boothby made a fortune with his Dr Nikola series and other thrillers. His start came from publication in the UK’s Windsor magazine.

A few years later, Adelaide’s Arthur Gask was writing murder mysteries in between patients at his North Terrace dental practice. This led to a long career as a popular detective writer. Several of his novels were published episodically in newspapers.

Explore the work of these and other writers with an Australian connection to serial crime.