What follows is a selection from the Cliff Hardy short stories, published in six separate volumes, from Heroin Annie in 1984 to The Big Score in 2007. These were good ideas that couldn’t be incorporated into a full novel, or they were written for publication in magazines or other anthologies. On one occasion, they accompanied a novella, Man in the Shadows (1988). The stories demonstrate some of Peter’s favourite themes—battlers, sport (especially boxing), his love of Sydney (corruption and all), his concern for and admiration of Indigenous people, as well as politics, local and national. Plus of course, crime.

Re-reading them, I’m struck by his graceful facility with the short story—his instinctive understanding of its shape and his unerring sense of when to finish, sometimes with the case unsolved, but always with some sort of resolution along the way. These stories are clever and humorous, sympathetic and cynical, and they do what all the best short stories do—they open small windows out to a larger world.

—JB