The Gavel

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White-collar crime has never had such devastating consequences…

Ian Hopewell is in the dock. He is the face of corporate greed and he stands accused of contributing to the global financial crisis because of his fast and loose investment policies.
But this isn’t an ordinary court. This court is marsupial and likes bouncing across the Australian outback on two spring-like legs. And Farmer Bray is no ordinary judge. No, he’s full of Old Testament rage at men like Hopewell. ‘In my experience,’ he says, ‘those who beg for mercy seldom deserve it.’

But does Ian Hopewell deserve his cruel fate, which is sealed the moment Bray cracks the gavel down in righteous judgement? This chilling fable explores the case through Hopewell’s eyes, examining some of the crucial decisions which lead him to the end of the road and the brutal vengeance which will be meted out to him by Bray and his sons.

Reviews

DF Lewis, author: “…this story again exemplifies the wonderful conceits and turns of phrase in Kirby fiction. I am not exaggerating when I say that I am agog at Kirby’s torrent of characterisation and of plot and place by such turns of phrase, concerning, for example, just in this story, speed traps and navigation systems and silence like an airbag and half-sheep and names like ‘Call me Ronnie’ and ‘Luke or Danny’ – and I’m only scratching the surface here. You have to read ‘The Gavel’ to fully appreciate what I mean in context. This is a morality tale rather than crime fiction – except financial greed is a crime when you infect other people with it even if they infect you with their own greed thus to encourage you to infect them in the first place. A concertina of crime. And free gifts like a ball-peen hammer to become a symbol of rough justice is yet one more conceit or miraculous turn of phrase with which Kirby fiction is literally teeming.”