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.
Read more about this topic: Roland Perry
Famous quotes containing the word fiction:
“We can never safely exceed the actual facts in our narratives. Of pure invention, such as some suppose, there is no instance. To write a true work of fiction even is only to take leisure and liberty to describe some things more exactly as they are.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If one doubts whether Grecian valor and patriotism are not a fiction of the poets, he may go to Athens and see still upon the walls of the temple of Minerva the circular marks made by the shields taken from the enemy in the Persian war, which were suspended there. We have not far to seek for living and unquestionable evidence. The very dust takes shape and confirms some story which we had read.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Americans will listen, but they do not care to read. War and Peace must wait for the leisure of retirement, which never really comes: meanwhile it helps to furnish the living room. Blockbusting fiction is bought as furniture. Unread, it maintains its value. Read, it looks like money wasted. Cunningly, Americans know that books contain a person, and they want the person, not the book.”
—Anthony Burgess (b. 1917)