Old Games by Fiona Hardy

Fiona Hardy burst into the Australian crime fiction scene with her first book for adults, Unbury the Dead, which was shortlisted for the 2025 Ned Kelly Award for best Crime Fiction. That book introduced readers to Teddy and Alice, two fixers who live and work in the moral grey zone and do vaguely criminal jobs for a man called Choker. Hardy brings the pair back to the streets of Melbourne in her follow up Old Games.

The opening of Old Games finds Teddy and Alice preparing to spend a ‘carefully curated’ day essentially torturing someone. Their plans are changed when Choker asks them to investigate the theft of an urn of ashes. The ashes in question belonged to famous Australian tennis player Ashley ‘Perry’ Perineau. The case is further complicated when they learn that Alice’s former junkie sister is also working for Choker as security at Perineau’s house.

As with Unbury the Dead, Alice and Teddy move through a world of compromised and unsavoury characters. Everyone they meet is either lying to them or is compromised in some way. Whether it is Perry’s former double partner; the woman who was his biggest fan and is still somehow in the picture; the sculptor who is creating a statue of Perry; or Perry’s suspended police officer nephew. Even their client, Perry’s husband Suneet, is keeping secrets from them. This creates a rogues’ gallery of suspects for Alice and Teddy to bounce between.

While the main investigation sometimes feels a little slight, Old Games is the crime fiction equivalent of a ‘good hang’. The draw here is just spending time with Alice and Teddy, no matter what they are doing. Whether it is trying to balance their criminal and personal lives, or questioning suspects, or getting beaten up (or doing the beating) or still trying to come to terms with the questionably but lucrative decisions they made at the end of Unbury the Dead. They deal with all of these with quick wit, camaraderie and mordant humour.

With Old Games, Hardy continues a current move to bring Australian crime fiction back to the city. Teddy and Alice are urban creatures and in Old Games Hardy once again brings their murky milieu to darkly delightful life.

Old Games by Fiona Hardy

8

8.0/10