Outrageous Fortunes

<h2><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(51 51 51 1)>The gripping story of Australia's first female crime writer and her career-criminal son</span></h2><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(51 51 51 1)>When Mary Fortune arrived in Melbourne with her infant son in 1855 she was determined to reinvent herself. The Victorian goldfields were just the place.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(51 51 51 1)>After a time selling sly grog and a bigamous marriage to a policeman Mary became a pioneering journalist and author. </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(51 51 51 1)>The Detective's Album</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(51 51 51 1)> was the first book of detective stories to be published in Australia and the first by a woman to be published anywhere in the world. Her work appeared in magazines and newspapers for over forty years - but none of her readers knew who she was. She wrote using pseudonyms often adopting the voice of a male narrator to write about 'unladylike' subjects.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(51 51 51 1)>When Mary died in 1911 her identity was nearly lost. In </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(51 51 51 1)>Outrageous Fortunes</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(51 51 51 1)> Megan Brown and Lucy Sussex retrieve Fortune's astonishing career and discover an equally absorbing story in her illegitimate son George. While Mary was writing crime George was committing it with convictions for theft and bank robbery. In their intertwined stories crime fiction meets true crime and Melbourne's literary bohemia consorts with the criminal underworld.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(51 51 51 1)>'Mary Fortune's bold fictions electrified colonial Australia. But her own story pieced together by two tenacious literary detectives was best of all.' -</span><strong style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(51 51 51 1)>Gideon Haigh</strong></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(51 51 51 1)>'A fine introduction to the author and her work.' -</span><strong style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(51 51 51 1)>Garry Disher</strong></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(51 51 51 1)>'</span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(51 51 51 1)>Outrageous Fortunes</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(51 51 51 1)> is a delight: beautifully written and carefully researched it is an engrossing illuminating and ultimately deeply moving portrait of an extraordinary woman and her ne'er-do-well son. The pioneering crime writer Mary Helena Fortune finally receives the biography she deserves and no mystery reader should be without it.' -</span><strong style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(51 51 51 1)>John Connolly</strong></p>