THE SUBURBS OF HELL

A killer is hounding the seaside town of Old Tornwich. Residents are gripped by fear and suspicion, and the finger of blame is pointed in all directions. But the bodies keep falling and the crimes remain unsolved, the culprit at large. No mere whodunnit, The Suburbs of Hell—its story inspired by a real-life serial killer—is a profoundly disturbing psychological drama with a devastating conclusion, the final work of one of Australia's greatest writers.

Julian Randolph ‘Mick' Stow was born in Geraldton, Western Australia, in 1935. His first collection of poetry won the Australian Literature Society's Gold Medal in 1957—as did the prolific young writer's third novel, To the Islands, the following year. To the Islands also won the 1958 Miles Franklin Literary Award. In the 1960s he lectured at universities in Australia and England, and lived in America on a Harkness fellowship. In 1969 he settled permanently in England. He received the 1979 Patrick White Award. Overall, he published eight novels, four collections of poetry, a book for children, and several libretti.

Randolph Stow died in 2010, aged seventy-four. A private man, a prodigiously gifted yet intermittently silent author, he has been hailed as ‘the least visible figure of that great twentieth-century triumvirate of Australian novelists whose other members are Patrick White and Christina Stead'.