The Dying Trade

The Dying Trade (1980) is a crime novel by Australian writer Peter Corris. It was originally published by McGraw-Hill in Australia in 1980.

This novel was the first of the author's long-running series of novels featuring the recurring character private investigator Cliff Hardy.

Synopsis
When private investigator Cliff Hardy is summonsed to the home of wealthy property owner of Bryn Gutteridge at Vaucluse, an exclusive Sydney suburb, he is asked to investigate who is threatening Gutteridge's sister Susan. This all sounds rather simple but the case gets complicated when Gutteridge's family disputes start to take over, Hardy is fired and then re-hired by Gutteridge's stepmother after someone tries to kill her.

Critical reception
Mark Thomas, writing in The Canberra Times noted: "Corris' work may appear derivative and stylised, but that is the nature of the thriller. The reader wants to live off the sniff of a nuance, by determining how well the author can recount yet again the misadventures of a detective's encounters with high society...Corris succeeds in finding new angles and loopholes. The Dying Trade is genuinely full of suspense, packed with violence, paced fast and well, and maintains at least some vestiges of plausibility in the story."

Reviewing the book on the "AustCrime" website Karen Chisholm stated: "Early 1980's Sydney is a world away from current day Sydney and yet in many ways it's not, and the Hardy series is a testament to the similarities and changes. Hardy is a product of this place, and he inhabits a world that Peter Corris seemed to love, understand and despair of. The descriptive elements of the novels are beautifully done, crisp, pointed, short, sharp, Corris was a master at the art of the precise and the pithy."

Publication history
After its original publication in 1980 in Australia by publisher Macmillan the novel was later published as follows:


 * Pan Books, Australia, 1982
 * Text Publishing, Australia, 2012