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PAYBACK is a sprawling family saga – based on a true story. Its gripping narrative of derring-do, adventure, romance, violence, betrayal and the courage of four Australian brothers in the turbulent years between the two World Wars.
Set against the exotic backdrop of New Ireland and the jungles of New Guinea PAYBACK weaves the lives of two fictional families whose blood feud invokes the ancient New Guinea tribal code of payback.
Payback illustrates the ephemeral satisfaction of revenge and the lasting sadness of loss.
Payback is a true story disguised as a novel. Based very closely on Bell's own family history, it is set in New Guinea. But whereas the Bells didn't arrive in the Mandated Territory until 1926, the Williams family in the book took up in residence in 1909.
The temptation for the reader in this book is to try and work out what is true and what is fiction, but this is a fruitless exercise. Much better just to lie back and enjoy the ride, and what a ride it is.Bell has produced a great read – tragic, funny, engaging and throwing a new light on our nearest neighbour, PNG and its recent history.
In a word: Engrossing
Mary Vernon, Townsville Bulletin
If PAYBACK was simply intended to be an adventure story, it would succeed admirably. But its real appeal rests in its historical roots as the Airlie Beach author calls forth the collective spirit of another generation from another time and place.
Excerpt from review by Lynnis Bonanno, Daily Mercury
PURI PURI - the ancient lore that distils the essence of New Guinea tribal spirituality threads like mystical wood smoke through this book.
Puri Puri practitioners cast spells as innocuous as prompting a romantic liaison to as intense as causing death.
Angie Condor, adopted orphan from war-ravaged Europe and now an Australian photojournalist, is sent to Kavieng, New Guinea to cover the 25th anniversary of the sinking of Japanese P.O.W. ship Montevideo Maru and the loss of the 1000 Australian souls on board.
As she’s transported by a lumbering DC3 across the heart of this ancient land, Angie’s gripped by memories and feelings that are not her own. Here, at the approach of her 25th birthday, she is to discover her true ancestry - and Puri Puri. Puri Puri is the second book in the author’s ‘Williams Series’ and the first of two sequels to Payback.
This fascinating central myth follows the rise and fall of Nick Williams, an accidental venture capital warrior, whose ambition and inability to see the personal cost of his rise that takes him too close to the sun.
Nick Williams’s trawler-skipper background may have given him confidence but is it enough to prepare him for the world of international shipping. Nick is a minnow in deep water as he comes face to face with the inflexibility and complexity of government regulation or the stranglehold of unions on the Australian waterfront.
It is when Nick himself glimpses what he’s become, what everyone once close to him can see, that he realises the true value of wealth.