Peter Corris, author of Cliff Hardy crime novels, dies aged 76

The godfather of Australian crime fiction, Peter Corris, was widely credited with reviving the genre.

Author Peter Corris, pictured in the streets of Newtown in Sydney's inner west ahead of the release of his final Cliff Hardy novel. Picture: John Feder

Peter Corris, author of the Cliff Hardy series of crime novels, has died at the age of 76.

The godfather of Australian crime fiction, Corris was widely credited with reviving a genre whose earlier incarnations tended to be of the pulp variety.

He wrote more than 100 books, about 40 of them in the popular Cliff Hardy series. The character was raised in working-class Maroubra, a beachside suburb of Sydney, and worked various jobs before becoming a private investigator.

It was said of Corris that his novels best captured Sydney as a character.

Corris suffered type-1 diabetes and the disease eventually claimed his eyesight. It forced him to stop writing and his last novel in the Cliff Hardy series, Win, Lose or Draw was published last year.

“My eyesight, which has been poor for a long time, dropped suddenly and made it just too difficult, too stressful, too painful, really, to write anymore,” he told ABC Radio last year.

Corris was born in Stawell, Victoria in 1942. He earned a PhD in history at the Australian National University and worked as an academic before becoming a journalist at The National Times. He published his first book in 1980.