There is a great story, a quintessentially Sydney story, from the 1950s or '60s. It has a mythic quality and like most myths it changes slightly with each telling, but the core truth remains. The then Premier of NSW was throwing a party, which was crashed by a flying wedge of hard-drinking gunmen. Chow Hayes, maybe Joey Hollebone, a bunch of other guys.
Stone killers one and all.
They virtually shut the poor bastard out of his own gig and would only leave after being either paid off or warned off by an equally fearsome rogue copper, probably Ray Gunner Kelly. Sydney's criminal milieu has always eschewed the underworld for the top end of town, meshing comfortably with the city's elite in a way that the old-money establishment of Melbourne would never allow. But seep through it does in the end, staining everyone it touches with vile, concentrated residue of moral decay. Carroll's writing is reminiscent of the hard-core American pulper Andrew Vachs at his best, without the corrosive sexual undertow that eventually claims all of Vachs' mutant characters. If there is a criticism to be made of Hard Yards though, it lies in characterisation.