But as the Hardy production rate rose (Corris reportedly chums them out in six or eight weeks), the attractions of plot and language have dimmed, at least for me. As the number of Hardys on the shelves went to double figures, Corris began two new series, of which these two books are the second instalments.

The Baltic Business, like its predecessor Pokerface, is actually a joint production. Pokerface originated as an extended plot outline developed for television by actor and writer Bill Gamer during a stint at the ABC. Gamer found Corris, and the combination clicked: not only was the television series successful, but after Corris’ novel sold over 15,000 copies the publishers were hungry for more. Since the partnership had been both easy and successful, Gamer (in Melbourne) again limned the storyline and Corris (in Sydney) fleshed out the new novel in a matter of weeks.

While the combination is successful in production terms, the result is not as interesting as it should be, given the talents of scenarist and novelist. The Baltic Business’s Ray Crawley (he is a bit that way) is a field agent for the less than ept Federal Security Agency which finally gets around to taking a desultory look at the ethnic Right. In marriage and spooking Crawley is cynical, street-smart, and a survivor. As in the real world Corris and Gamer see more out there than the laughable FSA, and the twists are nicely and nastily done.

Corris – and it is the novelist here – is at his best with the word rather than the storyline: the pleasant, dull sense of Melbourne against Sydney, the yuppie basket weavers of FSA bureaucracy and social science academe. But it’s quite enough to sustain the storyline – which could have taken a lot more fleshing out beyond the cardboard scenes Corris provides.

‘Beverly Hills’ Browning is the second of Corns’ editing and annotating of the agreeably suspect memoirs of the seedy and well-pickled name-dropping octogenarian, Richard Kelly Browning. Browning is another lookalike, this time modelled on Harry’ Flashman, whose memoirs George Macdonald Fraser is still dutifully and profitably editing. Like Flashman, Browning is a genial rogue, but rather more graceless and distinctly thick. Corns’ hero stumbles, by his own account, from one mess to another, interspersed by uncontrollable bouts of the good life.

Unfortunately, Browning’s memoirs are rather like him: not very well written, thin and not very entertaining. Like his mentor Flashman, Browning is a likeable coward, but written rather lamely.

At least Flashman is articulately rotten, and between the laughs, Fraser has a point about the so-called ‘heroes’ of schoolbook history. Browning’s two escapes (well, two and two halves counting jumping ship and a train) are not all that exciting; his villainies not all that reprehensible; his sexual exploits neither tantalising nor funny (the de rigueur necessary options for the genre); and the overall story, ho hum. Most disappointingly, Corris’ wonderful ear for language, apart from a few appropriate anachronisms for the period, seems to be blocked up (although, for Chandler aficionados, he reaches San Francisco on the SS Sternwood).

In ‘Beverly Hills’ Browning, Corris the historian follows Fraser and Gore Vidal into the pleasantly obsessive world of editors’ pseudo footnotes on various famous or deservedly unknown historical figures, correcting Browning’s memory here and explaining an Australianism there. This should be more fun than it is; again, the selections from ‘history’ aren’t full enough, or funny enough, or outrageous enough to fill the genre bill. This is odd given Browning’s, the inveterate name-dropper, hint:

Scott Fitzgerald once told me that his writing was just a whole lot of lies about himself and other people. I followed the same principle.

Just who Corris the author/‘editor’ is explaining for is one of the puzzles – maybe my sense of humour’s fading, but I couldn’t help feeling Corris hadn’t quite decided whether Browning is for a would-be American market, and hence the colloquialisms to be unravelled, or whether he was just playing the genre, again rather lamely. Having just read Robert Barrett’s You Wouldn’t-Be-Dead-For-Quids, my taste was whetted for what I had wrongly assumed to be a past richness of Australian language, as well as for a sharp twist to a story. For some reason Coms passed up the possibilities of his twenties setting for Browning.

Although The Baltic Business is a good read, it’s not Corris at his best, and Browning is forgettable. When Corris started the Hardy series, life perked up. An Australian setting for the genre invented by Hammett and Chandler for Southern California in the twenties and thirties worked beautifully. Using Chandler’s model of a time-worn but decent private detective as a moral screen against which the only too recognisable criminal and political and business sleaze of Sydney could be projected worked even better. And Corris’ first person language worked best of all. The best of the Cliff Hardy series was from a genre that has retained its charms and usefulness, and was all the more welcome as a view of Australia.

But Hardy seems to have gone a bit flabby, and perhaps Corris’ extraordinary rate of production is in need of a rest. The advice Scott Fitzgerald gave Dick Browning is appropriate enough for the Flashman genre, but to make it all work you need a bigger lie, told with a bit more style. The pity of it all is that Corris is better than that, much better.