Pokerface

Ray Crawley #1

by Peter Corris

In Peter Corris's latest thriller the player with the best pokerface wins the game - and it's a dangerous game. Sacked from the Federal Security Agency, his marriage tottering, Ray Crawley forma an association with radical punk Roxy and her friends - and that's his first mistake.

Crawley's former boss Toby Campion is trying to manipulate him in a game with Canberra. But Crawley is still in the game, and he won't give up. All the players are holding good cards but will the best hand win?

191 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Peter Corris was an Australian academic, historian, journalist and a novelist of historical and crime fiction. His first novel was published in 1980. Corris is credited with reviving the fully-fledged Australian crime novel with local settings and reference points and with a series character firmly rooted in Australian culture, Sydney PI Cliff Hardy. As crime fiction writer, he was described as "the Godfather of contemporary Australian crime-writing".

He won the Lifetime Achievement award at the Ned Kelly Awards for Crime Writing in 1999 and was shortlisted for best novel in 2006 for Saving Billy and in 2007 for The Undertow.

Reviews

[Annette Heslin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a quick read, as less than halfway in I guessed what was going to happen. I kept reading as I wanted to know why.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

From what I can ascertain, Peter Corris and Bill Garner wrote a television series for the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission) called Pokerface, which starred Bruno Lawrence as Raw ‘Creepy’ Crawley. I assume, and could be very wrong, that it did not complete its intended run, or was not successful enough to go into a second series, and there were scripts and story outlines left over. These scripts and story outlines formed the basis of the Crawley series.

Pokerface appears to be the first in the series. The style of the book is quite different to the Cliff Hardy stories. It is harder, dirtier and sleazier – and it is set in Melbourne. With Corris’ stories, the cities they are set in are just as much a character as the people who populate it.

Ray Crawley is an agent for the Federal Security Agency (FSA), and as the story opens, Crawley and fellow agent Graeme Huck are on a stake out, watching a prison, as they have information that suggests that a felon is planning an escape.

As their tipoff suggested, the escape attempt takes place, but before they can react, a squad of armed police arrive, and shoot the escapee. Needless to say, Crawley and Huck’s operation is a bust. The head of the FSA, Tobias Campion is under pressure from Canberra money-men for results, and Crawley’s latest fiasco is an embarrassment to the Agency, and he is dismissed.

Being sacked, does little for Crawley’s domestic life. His marriage was already on the brink, and his dismissal, and consequent loitering around the house getting drunk, is the last straw for his wife, Mandy. Mandy leaves, and takes the children.

Crawley hits the pub, and picks up a young radical punk girl named Roxy. Despite their age differences, Crawley brings her home. Tagging along with Roxy, rather incongruously throughout the story, is Roxy’s friend Snow, who is a young stoner. He spends most of the story sitting on a couch, smoking spliffs and drinking booze.

Later, Crawley finds out that Roxy and Snow belong to a subversive group, that are anti-American, anti-Big Business, anti-Government and anti- … well just about everything else. They graffiti billboards, and in the past, have been involved bomb hoaxes, and other soft militant actions.

Crawley figures, using Roxy and Snow to get up to some mischief, orchestrated by himself, he might just be able to worm his way back into the FSA. Adding to this, Campion is still under pressure for some kind of score, which will secure his position, and secure extra funding for the FSA. When he finds out that Crawley is associating with a radical group, he sees it as an opportunity to achieve his ends.

So Crawley and Campion start working from different ends of the same problem. Both men want a big militant incident, and when Crawley, with a little help from his former partner, Huck, gets his hands on some handguns and plastic explosive, it looks like it is going to happen. But both Crawley and Campion want different outcomes.

There is a lot to like about Pokerface, as it is a bit more gritty and cynical than the Hardy stories – and admittedly I am biased, because I live in Melbourne – it is great to read fiction set in your own backyard, as it were. But ultimately, Pokerface is a disappointing story.

Firstly, the relationship between Crawley and Roxy, especially with their age differences, and Roxy’s political stance is barely believable. And furthermore, and I will not spoil the ending, their relationship at the end of the story is never really resolved. Did Roxy, and Snow for that matter, ever mean anything to Crawley? Or were they simply pawns to be used from the outset?

Next, too many of the plot machinations happen by happenstance. There is plotting and manipulation by both Crawley and Campion, but often their plans, and desired outcomes are never spelled out. It is all a secret.

And finally, in the end, everything that happens in the story, good or bad (and most of it is bad), is at the behest of Crawley and Campion who are playing there childish little games. As they play out their feud, the other characters are all innocent victims, in one way or another. Essentially the main protagonists are not likeable men in any way, shape or form. And I find it hard to ride along with (or read about) a character that I have very little empathy, or sympathy for. Crawley, ultimately is a nasty piece of work. He’s a self-centred drunk, who lucks out on this occasion.

But having said all that, I would read at least one more Crawley book. As this story ends, which once again I won’t reveal, there is a dramatic change in Crawley’s circumstances, and whether or not, this allows him to be a better person, or put his negative traits to use in a positive fashion is to be seen – or read in another Crawley story.

[Marianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pokerface is the first of the Ray Crawley series by popular Australian author, Peter Corris, and is based on the scripts for the ABC TV drama Pokerface, by Peter Corris and Bill Garner. After three Federal Security Agency operations gone wrong under his watch, Crawley finds himself jobless. Things with his wife Mandy aren’t good either: after a few heated arguments about money and alcohol consumption, she packs up the kids and goes to her mother’s. Crawley wants his job back, but his former boss, Toby Campion, has made him a scapegoat, and he’s determined to do something about it. Before long, Crawley finds himself associating with reactionary punk anarchists, doing plenty of hard drinking, shoplifting, defacing billboards, buying heroine, involved in an armed payroll robbery, making bombs, and blowing up a car. His long-time associate, Graeme Huck, appears to be acting for Campion, much to Crawley’s disgust. When things seem to be going pear-shaped, Crawley still manages to come out on top. This first dose of Ray Crawley has plenty of action, and lays the basis for the smooth-talking, slippery Ray Crawley character of later novels. While there are some loose ends that are never really tidied up, Corris is the master of the laconic, cynical Aussie male with some hidden depths. Corris paints a fairly accurate picture of the political and security situation in mid-eighties Australia in this exciting page-turner.