The author, Peter Macinnis, is well-known for his works on Australian history, including the four editions of The Big Book of Australian History, Australian Backyard Earth Scientist; Not Your Usual Bushrangers; Not Your Usual Gold Stories; Curious Minds and Australia's Pioneers, Heroes & Fools.
He is also experienced in the art of hoaxing, and the breaker of a number of serious fraud cases, most of which remain commercial-in-confidence. That said, his analysis of the spurious Chinese SARS statistics, his cracking of the PLATO scam and fraudulent chemists Dulong and Petit are all on the public record. It follows that it would be hard to pull the wool over his eyes, so you should trust this book.
In the first place, every single word that you find in this book is a genuine word, although the jury is still out on the wombahs. Still, if almost all the words are genuine, how could the phrases, the sentences, the paragraphs and the stories be otherwise?
You can read the whole of their adventures in this e-book. (If you go to that link and use the 'Look Inside' feature. you can read of some of the things Mick did, long before he met Henry.)
And now (October 2020), it is also available as a print-on-demand paperback. A word of advice, though: if you are in Australia, Amazon may decline to deliver it, due to their not wanting to get involved in GST. At thge moment, it isn't up there, but if you order it from Book Depository, that should work within the the next few days.
This is a celebration of two little-known heroes of Australia who flourished in the latter part of the 19th century and into the 20th century. While I don't admit to this in the book, as a boy, I was Henry Cruciform's next-door neighbour, and as his papers reveal, Henry met Crooked Mick of the Speewah on many occasions, so as you can see, they really existed.
Using the methodology pioneered by cherry-picking conspiracy theorists and George MacDonald Fraser in his ‘Flashman’ works, I document Cruciform’s life with exquisitely crafted footnotes. The science is either genuine or plausible, the dates are spot-on, and looking at it another way, like the stopped clock that is correct twice a day, this work may contain traces of truth.
Crooked Mick had a pretty good education, but Henry Cruciform was a scientist, who met most of the leading figures of the English-speaking world in the late 19th century and the early 20th century, and he corresponded with many of the world's scientific greats, sharing his inventions (including radio transmission, x-rays and a novel explosive, with which he and a person calling himself Doyle killed a Professor Moriarty by accident as Moriarty stalked them.
The identities of Doyle (who wore a deerstalker cap and was a violin-plying cocaine user) and Moriarty are a mystery. There was a writer called Doyle, who wrote about the death of a Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland at about the same time. Your author went there in the hope of finding a link between the cases, but found none, but while he does not raise this in the book, Cruciform was bothered for many years by a shady pastrycook known as Mr. Meringue. As the Swiss home of the meringue is Meiringen, at the foot of the falls, there may be a hidden story there.
Mick and Henry worked together during World War I, and while their work has largely been kept under wraps until now, there's a hint of it at this link. You can also read of part of Cruciform's intelligence work against the Germans.
For the rest, read the book.
Warning: the work contains the shocking truth about Mata Hari's time in Australia, how Professor Moriarty really died, the true genesis of the Boy Scouts, the music of Arnold Schönberg, where John Galsworthy got the idea for the Forsyte Saga, and who really killed the Red Baron. Readers will need a strong stomach.
The author's masterly analysis of the pencilled marginalia finally resolves the vexed question of Cruciform's choice of writing instruments, and "2B or not 2B?" can be struck off our list of concerns. —W. Shaxper, Evening Star.
Worth reading for the footnotes alone…
—Hans Sachs, Cobblers' Gazette.
One of the most murmurable loose carollaries ever…
—James Joyce, Finnegans Wake.
Better than a bag full of angry penguins.
—Ern Malley, Yandackworroby Times.
He would say that, wouldn't he?
—Randy Mice-Davies, Buxton Bugle.
I trust my readers will join me in grandly ignoring the complaints of sour-faced and grumpish scholars that "no such person" ever existed…
—Sir John Mandeville, Travels.
…if any of the company entertain a doubt … I shall only say to such, I pity their want of faith…
—Baron Munchausen, Historischer Taschenpost.
I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us.
—Franz Kafka, Cygnis ad Nauseam.
Nothing like having a bucket of cold water flung over you to make you see things as they really are!
—Enid Blyton, Lashings of Cream.
…we tend to believe whatever we first hear about strangers.
—Clifford Irving, True Tales.
You won't be able to put this book down. I know, because I have already tried poison, flame-throwers,
a team of assassins, a knife and a squadron of tanks, and still the thing is wriggling.
—Peter Macinnis, Two Australian Heroes
It was created on May 11, 2020, and last updated May 12, 2020.
If you email me at macinnis at ozemail.com.au, you will reach a spam trap, but you will be read, eventually, probably maybe. If you put my first name in front of that address (so it reads petermacinnis), you will reach me much faster and more surely. I am generally willing to talk to interesting humans. Spammers miss out twice on fitting that specification.
The home page of this set is here.