Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

Sly of the Underworld

Tales of crooks, coppers, and corruption
by
November 2024, no. 470

Dark City: True stories of crimes, cock-ups, crooks and cops by John Silvester

Pan Macmillan, $36.99 pb, 352 pp

Sly of the Underworld

Tales of crooks, coppers, and corruption
by
November 2024, no. 470

In 2020, John Silvester posed for a portrait by the artist Mica Pillemer. The picture is an arresting one: Silvester, in business attire, posing as a boxer. Behind him, the walls are plastered with newspapers and posters, a testament to his more than four decades of experience as a Melbourne crime reporter. His fists are raised, his dark eyes hold the viewer’s, his mouth is upturned with the faintest crook of a smile.

Silvester is the godfather of Australian true crime. As a reporter for The Sun and The Age, in his work on the ‘Naked City’ column and its associated podcast, Silvester has written some five million words on the subject of crime. In Dark City, which follows Naked City (2023), Silvester has trawled through this ocean of ink to present a collection of his choicest columns, arranged thematically in sections with titles such as ‘Crooks (and the not-so-crooked)’. Naked City was prefaced with appraisals of Silvester from ‘critics’ such as Tony Mokbel (‘bald-headed alien’) and Christopher Dean Binse (‘gutter lowlife rodent’). The journalist Nick McKenzie, more generous in his assessment, notes Silvester’s ‘fair and scrupulous’ journalism, his extensive network of contacts, and his longstanding commitment to advocating for justice for the victims of crime.

Dark City: True stories of crimes, cock-ups, crooks and cops

Dark City: True stories of crimes, cock-ups, crooks and cops

by John Silvester

Pan Macmillan, $36.99 pb, 352 pp

You May Also Like

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.