During the final desperate years of two warring tabloids a clueless copyboy bluffs his way into becoming a crime reporter on the nightshift where he must compensate for a lack of experience with a knack for attracting death. The bodies and the front pages start piling up, but so too the pressure. After messing up on a major story Aaron Knox is sucked back into the world of petty crime he had fought so hard to escape. He conceives a plan to resurrect his journalistic career by writing an exposé on the illegal operations of a gang of bikers he has befriended. But to fulfil his side of the bargain he is going to have to go all the way and join the Gypsy Jokers, that is if the Bandidos don't kill him first. Before Rupert Murdoch gave Americans their FOX News and before his journalists in London became embroiled in phone hacking scandals, a young Murdoch purchased an ailing afternoon newspaper in Sydney that was to make or break his career. This legendary tabloid was called the 'Sydney Daily Mirror' and against the odds Murdoch turned it into a success. The Daily Mirror became the foundation stone for his subsequent conquests in Great Britain and the US. However, by the late eighties Murdoch was living overseas as a US citizen and the Sydney Mirror, the paper that launched his media empire, was locked in a do-or-die battle for survival with its afternoon rival the 'Sydney Sun'. This cut-throat competition produced a school of journalism that wrote fast and drank hard - the legendary tabloid journalist Steve Dunleavy was a product of this school of hard knocks. The 'Suction' traces the climactic demise of the Sydney Mirror through the story of a fictitious young reporter thrown into extraordinary circumstances. Aaron Knox finds himself in the middle of a tabloid war where he must race around the city in search of car crashes, fires and murders. And as the rivalry with the Sun reaches boiling point, he comes under mounting pressure to throw his morals out the window and produce news stories at any cost, even if it means his sanity. "It was a dirty war, waged with fake first editions, sly bribes, beat-ups and misleading headlines, bingo cards and ever bigger breasts on Page 3. And the first shots of this daily fight for survival were fired at midnight when the nightshift reporters of the Sun and Mirror set off across Sydney in search of death and destruction with which to fill their pages." The 'Suction' paints a colourful picture of a city and era when criminals still controlled the ports and journos still smoked at work. In many ways it's an offbeat crime novel that strays into the realms of Trainspotting and Fight Club, in other words, blokes consuming lots of drugs and alcohol, doing stupid things like ruining their lives, and then trying to redeem themselves. Journalists under the gun, bikers armed with guns, and rugby thugs gunning for glory: it doesn't get much sleazier than this.
About the Author: Tony McGowan is a writer, editor and translator. A former newspaper reporter and public relations man, he is the author of 'Crew', a novel recognized by the Australian/ Vogel's Literary Awards. A native of the less glamorous suburbs of Sydney, he lived in Australia and Germany before settling in West Africa where he resides today.