The Trap

Description

SHORTLISTED – 2026 ARA Historical Novel Prize

SHORTLISTED – 2026 Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Award

Sydney, October 1942. A wartime city dimmed by brownouts, flush with American cash, rotten with corruption.

For nightclub manager Ray Sayles, a fateful encounter in the Domain turns him into a police target. He’s plunged into a system where the rich are untouchable but the marginalised – like notorious queer sly-grogger Iris Webber – are relentlessly targeted, and bent coppers hunt ordinary men whose only crime is desire.

Based on a shocking real-life scandal, The Trap is a blistering, standalone companion to the best-selling Iris. By turns tender and excoriating, it exhumes the hidden history of a city in which the law is a weapon wielded against those deemed deviant – and the most unforgivable vice is the truth.