Nothing in the post-war decades reveals the underbelly of Australian life the way police records do.

Small time heists. Failed robberies. Runs of bad luck. Payback. Love gone wrong. Drink, drugs and late-night assignations. Cops doing their job well. And badly. Plausible lies, unlikely truths. Murder and misadventure. In Suburban Noir Peter Doyle – author of City of Shadows and Crooks Like Us – explores the everyday crime and catastrophe that went on in the fibro and brick veneers, the backyards, bedrooms, vacant lots and pokie palaces of 1950s and 1960s Sydney suburbia.

Extensive research into forensic archives, public records and the private papers of the late Brian Doyle (1960s detective, later assistant commissioner of police, and Peter Doyle’s uncle) also reveals important new information about two of the most famous crimes in Australian history – the Kingsgrove Slasher case and the Graeme Thorne kidnap-murder.