Peter Corris (1942-2018), author, was educated at Melbourne High School and the University of Melbourne. After taking a Master's degree at Monash University and a PhD at the Australian National University (both in History), he was an academic, teaching and researching history in various higher education institutions. In 1975 he gave up academia for journalism; he was literary editor of the National Times from 1980 to 1981. His first novel was published in 1980 and two years later he became a full-time writer of crime fiction. Corris's books are 'credited with reviving the fully-fledged Australian crime novel'; they are set in identified local locations, and Cliff Hardy, the protagonist of dozens of the works, is uncompromisingly Australian. His work of 'conjectural history', The Journal of Fletcher Christian (2005) returned him to the territory of his academic specialisation, the Pacific.
