Craig Godfrey

Fortuitous Adventurer and Sleuth with an Eye for the Ladies — After decades in the hospitality industry and the best part of forty years since opening the Drunken Admiral Seafood Restaurant Craig hung up the apron to leave family at the helm and indulge in his other passion, writing fiction.

Craig is currently writing the seventh book in a series called Shadow Hunter involving Caspian Hunter who travels to Van Diemen’s Land in 1855 from Birmingham to take position as second in charge of Hobart Town’s fledgling police department. His adventures around the waterfront inns are boundless.

Another contemporary series, with number five recently completed, involves the chef of a Hobart waterfront restaurant called the Hook, Line and Sinker. Along with his partner, assistant curator at the Tasmanian Museum, they find themselves in continuous trouble whether it be solving the disappearance of rare art works on Tasmania’s west coast, caught in hand glider dog fights over the Caribbean Sea, lost in the myriad of tunnels under the battlefields of Flanders or imprisoned by antiquity thieves in Venice.

Other action adventure novels are either set in 1830s Van Diemen’s Land, 1940s Tasmanian wilderness and a murder investigation set in Sydney and Darwin in 1974.

Craig was born in Hobart in 1952 and traveled extensively giving him the experiences and escapades he so enjoys putting into print. This includes working as a chef for a restaurant owned by Sydney underbelly figures in the early 70s and cooking in Darwin when cyclone Tracy destroyed the city. Life has been busy and interesting to say the least.

In the 90s Craig independently shot two feature films, a murder mystery set in Southern Tasmania which aired on television and a splatter comedy still available online. He wrote, produced and directed both.

Having led a ‘normal’ life of work and duty Craig Godfrey decided to follow his real passion of writing fiction. And with Tasmania’s fascinating past he has plenty to write about.

Using Tasmania’s history as a blank canvas Craig loves nothing more than to weave adventure, mystery and mayhem involving colorful characters from all walks of life. He has published 15 previous titles.

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Coral Moon by Craig Godfrey

Samoa, 27, arrives in Cook Town to charter a boat to take her to Mist Island in the Solomon’s searching for her younger brother, Rennison, whom she has not heard from in fourteen months. In his last letter he was with Lutheran missionaries. He requested five hundred bibles sent from a Sydney. Samoa hires Tatsuo Gaston (Japanese-Frenchman) and his cutter the Mystery. At Mist Island the brother has moved on following rumours of a lost Chinese junk with gold aboard taken from Queensland goldfields. But Rennison harbours dark secrets. He’s associated with the Germans infiltrating the Pacific. Meanwhile the Royal Navy pursues the Mystery on gunrunning charges. The weeks progress, and Samoa and Tatsuo fall in love. Rennison is discovered marooned on the Shoal of Ghosts off Malaita. Rescued, Rennison leads the Mystery to Half Moon Reef where the Chinese junk was lost twenty years earlier, but more recently it was identified as wreckage exposed when a tsunami withdrew over the reef. Those aboard the Mystery overcome headhunting savages before Tatsuo, a hardhat diver, dives for the gold, retrieving much of it. However rival pearler, Captain Bligh of the Beacon and the German Navy have other plans.

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Silent From the Shadows by Craig Godfrey

The Van Demonian Sleuth Casper Hunter Series. Nineteenth century Van Demonian sleuth, Caspian Hunter, is a lawman deeply immersed in the life and crimes of Hobart Town, where convicts transported from Mother England form a majority of the population. Caspian and his decidedly unconventional associates are sworn to uphold the law where lawlessness is almost a way of life. In this colony on the very edge of the vast British Empire maintaining law and order is no simple task. It’s 1858 and free settlers are arriving in greater numbers as ships arrive in Hobart Town’s beautiful deep-water harbour. There are whalers making fortunes from their grisly trade and thriving merchants. The economy is booming, bringing with it taverns, enterprising ladies and the riff-raff of the empire searching for a better life – or somewhere to hide. Mysterious murder victims appear around Hobart Town with inexplicable puncture marks to their throats. ‘Vampires!’ the ignorant rant as anarchy threatens the island. Meanwhile Caspian Hunter is under increasing pressure to solve the murders – pressure from everyone from the Governor to the poor and illiterate who he has chosen to protect.

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1814

1814 is a tale of two hemispheres and a man and a woman who initially shared little but the English language. Of a man of peace–a doctor–ensnared in the violence of the American Revolution, forced to flee the former American colonies of King George III. Of a very young woman fighting for survival amid the injustice, poverty, and corruption of early Nineteenth-Century Britain. A woman who is unjustly sentenced to trans- portation to Van Diemen’s Land. British ‘justice’ was harsh beyond belief at this time and at its worst in its treatment of female convicts. At this point in history, Britain and particularly the Royal Navy were all-powerful and the American doctor sought anonymity under a new identity. He ‘signed on’ with a group of sealers who had their own notorious empire in the remote islands of Bass Strait. These sealers, to this day, are recognized as the most evil of men. It is in this lawless world that two good people meet.

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Taken to the Grave

The Van Demonian Sleuth Caspian Hunter Series. Nineteenth Century Van Demonian sleuth, Caspian Hunter, is a colonial lawman deeply immersed in the life and crimes of Hobart Town, where convicts transported from Mother England form a majority of the population. Caspian and his decidedly unconventional associates are sworn to uphold the law where lawlessness is almost a way of life. The fledgling colony includes newly pardoned convicts – ‘ticket of leave men’ – on a sort of parole. Misfits and unsavoury characters come this remote outpost of the British Empire to get as far away as possible from whatever lives they seek to leave behind. But by the middle of the century, free settlers are arriving in ever greater numbers from Britain. Hobart Town is blessed with one of the world’s most beautiful deep-water harbours, so it also attracts sailors and whalers. And it is rapidly becoming prosperous. There are inns aplenty, and a growing number of enterprising ladies are skilled in the arts of making sailors, whalers, gentlemen and even lawmen briefly happier and certainly poorer. This is Caspian’s town.