| Dead Men Running | |
| Author: | D'Arcy Niland |
| Language: | English |
| Publisher: | Hodder & Stoughton, London |
| Release Date: | 1969 |
| Media Type: | |
| Pages: | 315 pp |
| Isbn: | 0718106784 |
| Preceded By: | The Apprentices |
| Followed By: | – |
Dead Men Running (1969) is the final novel by Australian writer D'Arcy Niland. It was published posthumously.[1]
Set during the years 1910 to 1916, the novel follows the story of Starkey Moore, a loner living in the small outback town of Hope, who discovers a young man collapsed by the side of a road in a storm. Moore nurses the young Joey back to health and proceeds to teach him a number of life lessons.
Ian Hicks, writing in The Canberra Times, was impressed with the book: "After my first reading of Dead Men Running, I had an overwhelming feeling of disappointment that there would be nothing more from the pen of D'Arcy Niland. But look at it from another viewpoint. How fortunate a man to have died, leaving behind a book as good as this. Make no mistake, it is a statement of fact, not of opinion nor of sympathy, to assert that this is a great novel."[2]
The novel was adapted for television by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 1971.[4]