Television and Australian Crime Fiction
Television was introduced in Australia in 1956 and remained a ‘novelty’ for about 10 years. Even Australian crime fiction fell under its spell. In The Cold Dark Hours (1958) by A.G. Yates (a.k.a. Carter Brown), an advertising agency executive devises an ad campaign to sell defective TV sets; in the series of pulp novels by W.H. Williams featuring Marc Brody, he starts out as a newspaper crime reporter and ends up as ‘TV’s on-the-spot crime reporter’; in Who Dies for Me? (1962) by S.H. Courtier, people are secretly monitored by means of tiny TV cameras placed inside light globes; and in Make-up for Murder (1966) by June Wright, a popular TV show host is threatened with murder. Does anyone know of others featuring TV?
