A literary detective story ingeniously told in ten cases. John Dorn is a classic gumshoe. His woman has left him, he lives in his office, and he drinks too much. His one friend, a lawyer named Demetri, hands Dorn an infinite supply of hopeless cases and lost causes, to which Dorn, ever the champion of the underdog and the oppressed, is drawn to "as a sledgehammer is to a kneecap." A superlative work of hardboiled literary detective fiction, The Midnight Promise wonderfully evokes the underbelly of contemporary Melbourne, its battlers, its hard men, its victims, and its ill-fated heroes.
"Stylistically reminiscent of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction or Kill Bill. An exciting and original debut."
The Hoopla Literary Society
"[A] powerful hard-boiled debut . . . The cases get progressively more disturbing, both in terms of their subject matter, which include gruesome torture, and their impact on Dorn, a classic world-weary narrator."
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Lovitt has a neat way with a yarn. . . . And just when you think he is going to stay close to a kind of downbeat realism, there is a slide into something a little thrillerish and action-packed."
