King Of The Cross

Violently funny, brutally incorrect, sly and subversive and addictive... A killer read from a writer who punches both hands and winks at the crowd while he's at it. His protagonist is part punk, part pug, part poet – an anti-hero who reveals his own back story as he gets the King of the Cross to unravel the eerily familiar tale of his unlikely rise from schoolboy pornographer to millionaire philanthropist. Truth might be stranger than fiction but in the hardened artery of Dapin's 'King's Cross', alleged fiction rings truer than the alleged facts. A cunning stunt that could get him knee-capped. (Andrew Rule, author of Underbelly)

King of the Cross is a dazzling novel that explores the criminal world of Jacob Mendoza: legendary Godfather of Kings Cross and for more than four decades, Australia's most powerful and notorious crime figure. To record his epic life story he employs a hapless young reporter from the Australian Jewish Times. As Mendoza unfolds his seductive story of thugs and drugs, murders and mysteries, bikers, bent cops and girls, girls, girls, it emerges that he's not the only one with a past. And as the memoir takes shape, other more terrifying criminals are circling the kingdom that Mendoza built.

This is crime fiction as it's never been written before. Funny, edgy, violent, subversive and utterly compelling, King of the Cross is wickedly entertaining.

About The Author

Mark Dapin moved to Australia in the late 1980s. He is the author of Strange Country, has been editor in chief of ACP's men's magazines, and a hugely popular columnist for Fairfax's Good Weekend. He lives in Sydney with his partner and two children.