Fiction
Perry worked for three years part-time on his first book, a fictional thriller, Program for a Puppet, which was first published in the UK by W. H. Allen in May 1979 and then Crown in US in 1980. Newgate Callendar in The New York Times called it ‘altogether an exciting story ...an exciting panorama.’ Publishers Weekly (US) said: ‘In a slick, convincing manner, Perry welds high-tech with espionage.’
In an interview on Sydney radio a decade after the publication of Program for a Puppet, Perry spoke about learning more from the negative reviews for his first fiction book than the good reviews: ‘Some were a bit cranky; some were patronising,’ he said, ‘but they were all in some way instructive. One thought the writing was “too high mileage.” Another spoke of a “staccato” style. I recall another mentioning that it was, at times, like a film script. One reviewer thought I had two good thrillers in one, which had merit. I did meld two big themes that may have been better separated. But you don’t really know what you are doing on a first fiction. I did all the heavy research, “forty ways to pick a lock,” that sort of thing.’
The author’s second novel, Blood is a Stranger was set in Australia's Arnhem Land and Indonesia. This covered the ‘issue’ of the misuse of uranium mining and dangers of nuclear weapons, a theme in Perry’s early writing and documentary film-making. Stephen Knight in the Sydney Morning Herald wrote: Blood is a Stranger is a skilful and thoughtful thriller... with a busy plot and some interesting, unnerving speculations about what might be going on in the world of lasers, yellowcake (uranium mining and manufacture) and Asian politics—things that most people prefer to ignore in favour of more simple and familiar puzzles.’
Roland Perry returned to fiction and a pet theme—the evils of nuclear weapons—in his third novel Faces in the Rain (1990). Set mainly in Melbourne and Paris, he used the first person to expose the nefarious activities of the French in testing and developing nuclear weapons in the Pacific.
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Famous quotes containing the word fiction:
“The purpose of a work of fiction is to appeal to the lingering after-effects in the reader’s mind as differing from, say, the purpose of oratory or philosophy which respectively leave people in a fighting or thoughtful mood.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“For if the proper study of mankind is man, it is evidently more sensible to occupy yourself with the coherent, substantial and significant creatures of fiction than with the irrational and shadowy figures of real life.”
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965)
“The private detective of fiction is a fantastic creation who acts and speaks like a real man. He can be completely realistic in every sense but one, that one sense being that in life as we know it such a man would not be a private detective.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)