Hard Yards

It's September 2000, and the Olympic Games are about to descend on Sydney. The city is at fever pitch, but Barrett Pike, private investigator, couldn't care less.

The excitement in Barrett's life comes via his part-time squeeze, the glamorous and successful Andrea Fox-Fearnor, and the after-dark activities of Sydney's notorious criminals – in particular, the sartorial stand-over man, Ernesto "Hollywood Jack" Tucci.

When a violent incident at a restaurant in which Barrett's bull-at-the-gate treatment of an infamous piece of pond scum is witnessed, Barrett is made in an offer even he can't refuse – $150,000 to bodyguard Titus "Bunny" Delfranco, the fastest man in the world. Sounds like easy money, but the sprinter has a million-dollar tag on his head, and an American ex-marine turned bounty hunter, Edward Hickey, is going to have Bunny running for his life. And Barrett, together with his main man, the formidable Geoff O'Mara, is going to have his work cut out staying in the game – and staying alive.

Add to this mix a shadowy team of car-bombers, an exotic beauty with gangland connections and a doomsday sect hell bent on revenge, and the result is a complex, nightmarish thriller that pushes the genre about as far as it can go this side of the apocalypse.