The gripping and revealing inside story of Australia's most notorious armed robbers.In the Australia of the 1960s, 70s and 80s, armed robbers were the top of the criminal food chain. Their dash and violence were celebrated, and men like Russell 'Mad Dog' Cox and Ray Denning were household names long before Underbelly established Melbourne's gangland thugs as celebrities.Cox and Denning were once Australian Public Enemies Number One and Two. Both were handso...

For more than thirty years, Mark Dapin has been hanging out with crooks, and both types of cop. In this gripping, often funny and always surprising book, he sorts the tall stories from the truth about true crime, showing us what some of Australia’s most famous felons are really like.Mark Dapin was still in school when he met his first murderer – a boy called Ian. In reporting the murder Ian eventually committed, newspapers used the cliché that it ‘shocked even thos...

The true stories behind the myths of Gregory Roberts, John Killick and Australia's most wanted men.'Dapin's words cut into the organs of the criminal underworld like a surgeon's knife!' DAVID McMILLAN, Klong Prem Central Prison Bangkok escapee'Mark Dapin has built a rapport with some of Australia's most serious criminals. It is a rapport that gives him an edge over other authors that cannot be replicated.'BERNIE MATTHEWS, Long Bay Correctional Centre escapee...

Sex + Money: growing up in the men's magazines is the story of Mark Dapin's rise from the gutter (where he found himself one sad morning with no money and no shoes) to editor-in-chief of Ralph magazine. Along the way, he has his ribs broken by world welterweight boxing champion Kostya Tszyu and his heart broken by supermodel Claudia Schiffer. He visits a lap-dancing club with confessed killer Chopper Read, and hangs out with SAS troopers and Foreign Legionnaires. But the ...

"This book is about the people I met as I crisscrossed Australia by train and plane and L-plated car: the undefeated dreamers and wild-hearted romantics, the obsessed hobbyists and beautiful failures. It is about heroes and legends, illusions, delusions and hope, and one or two men with shit for brains who ought to be locked up."As anyone who's ever read Mark Dapin's column and features in Good Weekend knows, he's an immensely funny, acute and vivid observer of Australian ...

King of the Cross is crime fiction unlike any other. Mark Dapin's award-winning novel depicts the world of Jacob Mendoza: ruler of Kings Cross and, for more than forty years, Australia's most powerful and infamous crime figure. Now in his eighties, Mendoza decides to employ a hapless young journalist to ghostwrite his memoir. As Mendoza reveals his epic life of thugs and drugs, murders and mayhem, crooked cops and girls, girls, girls, it appears that he's not the only one with a p...

**2019 Nib Military History Prize Finalist **'This book should be read by anyone interested in the way myths become accepted as history.' — Peter Edwards, author of Australia and the Vietnam WarWhy everything you think you know about Australia's Vietnam War is wrong.When journalist and historian Mark Dapin first interviewed Vietnam veterans and wrote about the war, he swallowed (and regurgitated) every popu...

Millions have been entertained by the viral video of a man being arrested after a ‘succulent Chinese meal’. But when Mark Dapin investigated, it emerged that this man's story went to the heart of the Australian underworld. A true crime cult classic in the making.Whether you know it as the ‘succulent Chinese meal’ video, or ‘democracy manifest’, chances are you have seen the video of baritone larrikin Jack Karlson getting arrested outside a Brisbane Chinese restaura...

Longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award & Shortlisted for The Age Book of the YearThirteen-year-old David is confused and staying in Bondi with his grandparents. His mum seems to have abandoned him to run off with her lover, and his grandfather, Jimmy, spends his days at the local RSL grumbling with his best mates, all of them Jewish survivors of the Thai–Burma Railway. But underneath their bickering and banter struggle three men haunted by the ghosts of long-dead comrades....

From Simpson’s donkey and the Emu War to Vietnam and Ben Roberts-Smith, Australian military history is full of events that didn’t happen the way most people think they did. In his inimitable style, award-winning author Mark Dapin sets the record straight.Australia has many stories and statues ‘lest we forget’ our military past. But from Simpson’s donkey to Ben Roberts-Smith, our history is fullof events that didn’t happen the way most people think they did.

On 10 March 1965, the first nasho's birthdate was drawn from a lottery barrel at the Department of Labour and National Service in Melbourne. Over the next seven years, a total of 63740 young Australian men would be drafted into the army and face the prospect of being sent to war.The nashos came from all walks of life: plumbers and dentists, footballers and musicians, Christians and Jews, willing and unwilling. Some spent their two years square-bashing in Singleton. Others went to Vi...

John 'Nashville' Grant is an American military policeman in the R&R town of Vung Tau, tucked safely behind the front lines of the Vietnam War. Nashville knows how everything works: the army, the enemy, bars, secrets, men and women. He's keeping the peace by keeping his head down and making the most of it.His new partner is a tall man from a small town: Shorty, from Bendigo. Shorty knows nothing about anything, and he wishes people would stop mistaking that for stupidity.When ...