| Peter Doyle | |
| Birth Date: | 1951 |
| Birth Place: | Maroubra, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia |
| Occupation: | Novelist |
| Genre: | Detective fiction |
| Movement: | Pulp Fiction |
| Notableworks: | The Devil's Jump |
Peter Doyle (born 1951) is an Australian author, musician, and visual artist. He lives in Newtown, New South Wales, and works for Macquarie University where he teaches Print Media Production and as a part-time curator of Sydney’s Justice and Police Museum.
Peter Doyle was born in Maroubra, Sydney, New South Wales, and grew up in Sydney's eastern suburbs, which provides much of the setting for his fiction work.He has a Bachelor of Arts (Communications) from UTS and a PhD in Media and Mass Communications on the renderings of virtual space in early popular music recording from Macquarie University (2002). He also maintains a research interest in comics and the graphic novel, the history of twentieth century popular music, as well as crime writing, both in Australia, and overseas.
He worked variously as a taxi driver, musician, and teacher prior to his first publication, Get Rich Quick in 1996, which won him Australia's prestigious Ned Kelly Award for Best First Crime Novel in 1997. He followed this with another successful sequel, Amaze Your Friends, which won him another award, the Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Novel in 1998. His third title, The Devil's Jump, released in 2001, was a prequel, and was set in Sydney in the closing days of World War II.
His curatorial work at the Sydney Justice and Police Museum has seen him curate two major exhibitions, ‘Crimes of Passion’ (2002–2003), and ‘City of Shadows: inner city crime and mayhem, 1912-1948’ (November 2005-February 2007), both of which were social histories of inner-city twentieth century Sydney from the point of view of crime scene photography.
His musical style is a mixture of Sydney blues, rockabilly, country and pub rock scenes, and his interest in music is a strong influence in his fiction writing.
| Year published | Title | Publisher | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1996 | Get Rich Quick | Minerva | |
| 1998 | Amaze Your Friends | Random House | |
| 2001 | The Devil's Jump | Arrow | |
| 2015 | The Big Whatever | Dark Passage |
| Year published | Title | Publisher | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2004 | The Currency Companion to Music and Dance in Australia | Currency (co-authored with John Whiteoak and A Scott Maxwell) | |
| 2005 | Historic Houses Trust of NSW | ||
| 2005 | Echo and Reverb | Wesleyan University Press: University Press of New England | |
| 2009 | Crooks Like Us | Historic Houses Trust of NSW | |
| 2022 | Suburban Noir: Crime and mishap in 1950s and 1960s Sydney | NewSouth |
Doyle has written feature articles, reviews and short pieces for The Bulletin, HQ and The Sydney Morning Herald. He has also been a columnist for Max and Sydney City Hub.