Jock Serong’s The Rules of Backyard Cricket was a bit of an unusual inclusion in our roster for 2020, arriving on our radar after Robert Gott described it as one of the greatest crime fiction novels of the past decade. Turns out, we agree! The Rules of Backyard Cricket comes in third on our rankings after tearing our hearts to pieces as much as we tore it to pieces. A story about brothers, cricket and crime, this book opens with our protagonist and perspective, Darren Keefe, tied up and gagged in the back of a car, with a bullet wound to keep him company. Our story follows Darren’s reminisces as he reflects on his career, from his childhood playing cricket all the way through his life playing club and national representative cricket. As his loose-cannon inability to make sensible choices continues to get him into trouble, we start to unravel how Darren ended up in that car, and why it might have been inevitable.

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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