Megan Brown and Lucy Sussex on ‘Outrageous Fortunes’
Megan Brown and Lucy Sussex bring Mary Fortune, one of Australia’s most prolific yet overlooked woman crime writers, and her criminal son, George, to light in their book Outrageous Fortunes (La Trobe, February). Brown, who completed her PhD at the University of Wollongong, focused on Fortune’s work, while Sussex, an award-winning author and honorary fellow at La Trobe University, is renowned for her expertise in crime fiction and Australian literary history. ‘This deeply researched portrait enriches our understanding of the two Fortunes and the way true crime advanced or unravelled their lives,’ observes Books+Publishing reviewer Nathan Smith, who spoke with the authors.
For the uninitiated, what makes Mary Fortune’s story so compelling, especially now, more than 100 years after her death? Is it fair to call Fortune the ‘mother of Australian crime fiction’?
Even if Mary Fortune’s writing weren’t compelling, her stories would be worth reading – she was an articulate witness to one of the most important periods of rapid change in Australia’s history: the gold rushes. But Fortune’s stories are compelling, because they are well-written and surprising. At the time when she was writing, women were supposed to be confined to the domestic space. While women in colonial Australia had a certain amount of latitude to extend their influence outside the home, Fortune ignored the barriers completely. She wrote from the viewpoint of an unprotected woman walking the streets and as a hardened male detective in her crime writing. In her memoir of the goldfields, she said that there would be ‘nothing of the namby-pamby elegance of ladies’ literature’ in her recollections. And indeed, there is nothing namby-pamby about any of her writing.
Fortune had a distinctive voice. She was often funny, slyly referential and self-deprecating. There are issues and themes to which she returned frequently. She was also not beyond settling a few scores in print from her position of anonymity. Given the bohemian life she led and her son’s criminal activities, she closely guarded her actual identity.
Many of the devices and conventions that we take for granted in modern crime writing were introduced by Fortune. So, yes, I think we can call her the mother of Australian crime fiction.
Tell us a little more about her relationship with her second husband (who was a mounted constable) and how that marriage likely gave Fortune rich insight into police work and the criminal justice system (which most other women would not have had access to).
The marriage was bigamous, something so common then that it was called ‘poor man’s divorce’. Mary ran away from her first husband from Canada to the Australian goldfields. There, she met a handsome young police trooper, Percy Brett. The marriage was short – he likely discovered its illegality. But she remembered him fondly, and he figured in her stories for years. She wrote convincing and realistic police procedurals in part because of Percy. She also drew on the knowledge of other detectives and beat cops she knew in Melbourne.
Percy would later be taken hostage by Ned Kelly in Jerilderie, where he acted bravely. Through his second (and legal) marriage, he would become the great-grandfather of historian Judith Brett.
What did you want to achieve by weaving George’s criminal history in with your biography of Fortune? How does George’s recidivist behaviour add to our understanding of Fortune and her writing?
Understanding George gives a deeper understanding of Mary’s work. Her writing borrowed from life, and George appears in her fiction again and again. In one of her first stories published in Australia, ‘How I Spent Christmas’, George appears as a small boy with a well-thumbed bible. Just as her husband’s policing activities influenced how Mary wrote, so did George’s poor life choices. Mary’s poverty and drinking probably contributed to the trouble that beset George, and this goes some way to explaining her depictions of neglected and troubled boys. They are always described in her stories as worthy but misunderstood. They are also helpful to the police because they have a lot of inside knowledge. George’s criminality gave Mary a unique insight into crime – she already understood crime from a police officer’s perspective, and through George, she came to understand it from the criminal’s point of view.
One of the recurring themes in her stories is how hard it was for newly released prisoners to avoid being drawn into more crime. The police set traps to ensnare recently released prisoners to get them off the streets. In her stories, Fortune imagined that leaving Melbourne and moving to the country was the only way to successfully escape police and criminal influences. She wrote both happy and sad endings for ex-cons, but more often, she wrote optimistic endings for criminals who left the city – an ending she clearly hoped George might achieve. In real life, George tried this several times but still ended up in prison.
George’s notoriety may have given Mary an extra incentive to avoid revealing her real identity. Some male journalists were only too happy to drop nasty hints about her relationship to George. Occasionally, she disappeared from the press when George got into trouble. The emotional angst she must have experienced, combined with her fear that readers would find out and boycott her work, must have had an effect on her writing.
Lucy, you played a major role in rediscovering Fortune’s unmarked grave and, along with Megan, confirming disputed facts about Fortune’s life (such as her likely year of birth). What was that experience like?
It was like taking part in a cold-case investigation. At the start, all that was certain was a surname and possible gender. Mary dropped clues in her stories and journalism; we followed them. Where archival evidence was missing, digital searches allowed us to make informed guesses. The more information we uncovered, the more accurate our guesses got. Searching for the word ‘fizzgig’ (a police informer) on Trove led us to 90 new stories and a new pseudonym. We had to stop writing and read furiously! When Megan found that Mary had written about George’s experience in Pentridge Prison for the Melbourne Herald, she danced around the room. Moments like those were the thrill of the chase.
For those eager to read Fortune but unsure where to start, what short story or work would you recommend?
Many of Fortune’s stories are still only accessible in microfilm or from databases. We recommend starting with our edited collection of her detective stories, Nothing but Murders and Bloodshed and Hanging, available from Verse Chorus Press in March 2025. It selects from the best of Mary’s 500 crime stories. There are tales of the goldfields, bush life and the seedy side of Marvellous Melbourne. A collection of her lively and opinionated feminist journalism is planned next.
Read Nathan Smith’s review of Outrageous Fortunes here.
Pictured L–R: Megan Brown and Lucy Sussex.
