An Interview with Andrew Nette: Author of Orphan Road

Orphan Road is the long-awaited follow-up novel to Gunshine State by Andrew Nette. Nette has brought back his signature character Gary Chance — a bruising but likeable professional thief who is always looking for that one big score that can take him out of the criminal underworld. In Orphan Road, Chance thinks he has found just that job. But the twist is that the heist happened several decades ago, and Chance just needs to find the loot. Chance soon discovers things are far less simple than they first appear.

Orphan Road is a terrific ‘heist gone wrong’ story that had me hooked from first page till last. I was delighted when author Andrew Nette agreed to talk to me about the writing of the book.

Interviewer: This is your second Gary Chance novel. Could you tell us a little about the character, and how he has changed since his first appearance in Gunshine State.

Nette: Gary Chance is an ex-Australian army truck driver, ex bouncer and a professional thief. In terms of his literary influences, when I wrote about him in Gunshine State, I had in my head a mixture of Donald Westlake’s Parker and Australian author Garry Disher’s Wyatt.

Then, several years after the release of Gunshine State I watched the television show, Mr Inbetween, which is about a Sydney bouncer at a strip club who side-lines as a stand-over man and a hitman, and I thought the show’s character – his name is Ray Shoesmith – is so much like how I imagine Chance, it’s not funny. Chance can be ruthless in the best hardboiled tradition, but he is also very Australian which I suppose means, he also has a laconic and humorous side to him, amongst other things.

Anyway, I am not sure that as a character Chance has changed all that much between books. He is still a thief and most of the jobs he is involved in go belly up for various reasons. He wants to get out of the criminal life but at the same time, it’s all he really knows. So, like Parker and Wyatt and other professional thieves in fiction, he is keen for that big score that will enable him to break out of the criminal scene.

In Orphan Road, this potential way out comes in the form of an offer from a former employer, once notorious Melbourne social identity, now aging owner of a failing S&M club, Vera Leigh – who first appeared in Gunshine State. Leigh’s business is gradually being squeezed out of a rapidly gentrifying Melbourne. But she has a plan to get out of her problems that involves one of Australia’s biggest heists, Melbourne’s Great Bookie Robbery. Leigh has intelligence that in addition to cash money, a cache of diamonds was stolen during the robbery and never recovered. She asks Chance to help her find them. Of course, they are not the only people searching for stones.

Interviewer: Orphan Road has elements of a heist narrative, but it is rooted in historical fact as you work in the Great Bookie Robbery of 1976. How did you first become hooked on this real-life crime and why did you choose to incorporate it into the novel?

Nette: I initially wrote Gunshine State because I love heist gone wrong stories and, with the exception of Disher, I thought that the sub-genre had been criminally under done in Australia. I am not sure I would say I am hooked on real life crime, but I am fascinated by the criminal history of Melbourne and, indeed, Australia. I suspect that a lot of this is a reaction of sorts to the fact that the city has changed so much and become so gentrified.

It’s also because, as the cliché goes, reality is so much stranger than fiction, and thus is the case with the Great Bookie Robbery and its aftermath. As I said above, the money from the Great Bookie Robbery was never recovered and no one who was involved in it was ever jailed for the crime. Instead, the thieves, whose identity was an open secret in the then Melbourne underworld, fell out among themselves and in the years that followed they left a trail of corpses in their wake.

There’s a fair bit of true crime history in Gunshine State, as well. But in terms of the decision to specifically set a novel in the aftermath of the Great Bookie Robbery, I have to credit Wallace Stroby’s excellent series of books featuring the female criminal, Crissa Stone. While I didn’t re-read it whilst writing Orphan Road, in the back of my mind was Stroby’s 2021 book, Kings of Midnight. In it, Stone gets involved with a retired gangster and one of the few surviving members of the gang behind the infamous real-life Lufthansa heist from Kennedy Airport in 1978 (popularised in 1990 film, Goodfellas). The gangster recruits Stone to help him retrieve two million dollars from the heist that was hidden by a recently deceased mobster. This was the initial inspiration for the idea of a story revolving around the idea that money wasn’t the only thing stolen from the Melbourne Bookie Club that day in 1976.

Interviewer: In addition to the Great Bookie Robbery, you also work in Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War and the organised crime scene in Philadelphia. What appeals to you specifically about historical crime fiction?

Nette: Philadelphia was worked in because it is my favourite American city and I thought it would be cool to take Chance there as part of his efforts to find the diamonds. The aftermath of the Vietnam War was yet another thing that has had very little direct play in Australian crime fiction. The aftermath of the war was also part of the wider milieu that surrounding the Great Bookie Robbery.

Interviewer: Orphan Road is a relatively and enjoyably short novel, given the history you have woven into it, how do you stop the plot from sprawling uncontrollably?

Nette: The simple answer is that Orphan Road was as long as I felt it needed to be. I do fret a bit that people will think it is too short, but that was the length it worked out at.

Having said that, personally I am a fan of shorter crime novels. For a start, I just don’t have time to read many really long novels these days. Also, while some people can get away with writing good crime fiction that is also long – James Ellroy springs to mind (although not so much these days) and Don Winslow is another example – for the most part, I very seldom ever come away from a long crime read not thinking that would have been so much better if it had been shorter and tighter, and I wonder why someone didn’t tap the author on the shoulder and suggest cuts.

Interviewer: Australian crime fiction is a thriving scene. You’ve interviewed many crime writers yourself. Are there any writers, Australian or otherwise, who you would credit as big influences on Orphan Road?

Nette: I have already mentioned Disher, who is one of Australia’s leading crime writers. I am not sure that they have been a direct influence in terms of either Gunshine State or Orphan Road, but two local authors who are an influence more generally, because they are both so bloody good and I want to write as, are David Whish-Wilson, who is based in Western Australia, and Iain Ryan, who is a Melbourne writer (and a friend). Your readers would be advised to check both out. Jock Serong is also very good. Ditto Leigh Redhead, although she does not write so much now. I would also recommend the half a dozen entries in the late Peter Corris’s Cliff Hardy series of books and Emma Viskic’s Caleb Zelic series.

Orphan Road by Andrew Nette is published by Down and Out Books.