John Byron
"a formidable new player in Australian crime writing"
Bio
I live, write and work in Melbourne, Australia, on Wurundjeri Country, sovereign lands that were never ceded.
I grew up in Sydney NSW, where I went to medical school for a time before leaving in the interest of the public safety.
I've worked as a trolley boy, a barman, a factory hand, a truck offsider, a shoe-shine boy, an office cleaner, a dish pig (sorry, 'kitchen porter'), a help desk operator, a sessional tutor, a national student leader, a humanities advocate and a federal ministerial adviser.
Now I work part-time at QUT as a policy adviser, and spend as much time as I can writing new fiction.
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After switching to the much safer humanities, I earned degrees in English from the Universities of Adelaide and Sydney.
In 2021 I was elected as a Fellow of the Queensland Academy of the Arts and Sciences. I'm also a Graduate member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.
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My writing has appeared in Meanjin, The Conversation, Australian Book Review, The Australian, Innominate, ITA, Time Out, On Dit, Hermes, Cultural Studies, dB, Campus Review, TNT and Rip It Up.
The Tribute is my first novel and it was shortlisted for the prestigious Victoria Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript in 2019.
Reviews
Begins as a compelling crime novel, then shifts into something even more shocking and wonderful.
One of the best debuts I’ve read – inventive, layered and brilliantly written. The Tribute is a class act.
A suspenseful and unnerving dissection of masculinity.
Natasha Stott-Despoja
Sometimes, when you’re reading a book, it takes a while to sense something else is sneaking up on you in its pages. There’s a slow release of information that makes you realise you’ve begun a book thinking it’s one kind of story, and been skilfully manipulated into reading another. The Tribute is this kind of book ... this is no mainstream procedural, and the characters bursting out of these pages have more to them than you could ever guess. This is no ordinary crime book, and there are no ordinary people in this extraordinary read.
Christian White
David Whish-Wilson
Fiona Hardy
READINGS
Byron utilises the architecture of a thriller to serve up a grim dissection of modern masculinity and misogyny, and never skimps on construction: an unnerving and suspenseful novel that draws you in with all the qualities of superior genre fiction.
Cameron Woodhead
THE AGE / SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
With richly imagined characters evenly portrayed without a lead protagonist, Byron’s novel is a subversive take on modern masculinity and misogyny told through the lens of an engrossing crime narrative.
Meticulously researched with an ambitious vision, [The Tribute] is dark and unpredictable, weaving a tapestry of narrative threads drawn together to a satisfying conclusion.
Some crime novels do more than expose the guilt of the criminal. They expose the guilt in us all. They move from intellectual pleasure – whodunit? – to a metaphysical reckoning with human sin.
John Byron’s debut, The Tribute, starts as the first kind of crime novel but ends as the second.
Geordie Williamson
THE SATURDAY PAPER
John Byron is a meticulous researcher… beautiful, complex detail
Amelia Lush
ABC RADIO SYDNEY
Judging panel 2019
Prize for an Unpublished Manuscript
VICTORIAN PREMIER'S LITERARY AWARDS
What happens next is sensational... with a shift of gears you’ll never see coming, and a mesmerising climax.
Just when I thought the story was heading in one direction, Byron completely shifted gears, leaving me reeling... The Tribute is so much more than just another gritty crime thriller.... The Tribute is hands down one of the most original thrillers of 2021, ushering in John Byron as a formidable new player in Australian crime writing.
BETTER READING
The Tribute is a superior crime debut, multi-layered, richly detailed and utterly chilling.
Cheryl Akle
THE WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN
Melbourne’s John Byron makes a spectacular debut with this psychological thriller that’s a compelling mix of police procedural, anatomy lesson and alarming misogyny and domestic control… this is one hell of a crime novel, probing the dark side of human nature… refreshingly, the storyline is far from predictable. Shocking but brilliant.
The Tribute crackles with a tension that is relieved by some well-timed dashes of black humour…
Throughout the book, Byron shows a flair for character development…
The chief female characters are well rounded and assertive; they stand their ground in an environment infused with blokey, retrograde sexual politics. The relationship between Joanna and Sylvia is sensitively rendered and moving…
The novel heralds the emergence of a promising literary talent, and could easily be transformed into a film, one that critics might well describe as ‘Hitchcockian’.
Jay Daniel Thompson
AUSTRALIAN BOOK REVIEW
The Tribute thus reveals itself to be more complexly layered than it might have originally appeared…. There were moments, particularly earlier in the book, when I wondered if Byron might have cast his thematic net a little too wide, but he pulls it all together admirably in the novel’s relentlessly suspenseful second half.
Gemma Nisbet
THE WEST AUSTRALIAN
it's a tense read that also provides social commentary long overdue for the crime genre.
Heather Lewis
GOOD READING
A multidimensional narrative, it straddles notions of misogyny and modern masculinity, through the framework of a compelling crime tale.
Dan Shaw
HAPPY MAG
Really good crime fiction has often been the vehicle through which society can view it's own failings and The Tribute is providing a very timely opportunity to do that in spades.
Karen Chisholm
AUSTCRIME FICTION
AUSTRALIAN BOOKSELLERS ASSOCIATION
Carina Bruce
THE HERALD SUN
a tense crime thriller.
THE COURIER-MAIL
Events
23 November 2021 - 6:00-9:30pm AEDT
First Tuesday Book Club, Dymocks Camberwell
I will be joining an illustrious panel of authors at the venerable Rivoli Cinema.
Places are limited so book early!
27 November 2021 - 6:30pm AEDT
Terror Australis Readers' & Writers' Festival
Southern Cross Virtual Cocktail Party
Events
23 November 2021 - 6:00-9:30pm AEDT
First Tuesday Book Club, Dymocks Camberwell
I will be joining an illustrious panel of authors at the venerable Rivoli Cinema.
Places are limited so book early!
27 November 2021 - 6:30pm AEDT
Terror Australis Readers' & Writers' Festival
Southern Cross Virtual Cocktail Party
Events
23 November 2021 - 6:30-9:30pm AEDT
First Tuesday Book Club, Dymocks Camberwell
I will be joining an illustrious panel of authors at the venerable Rivoli Cinema.
Places are limited so book now!
27 November 2021 - 6:30pm AEDT
Terror Australis Readers' & Writers' Festival
Southern Cross Virtual Cocktail Party
Tasmania's International Crime and Mystery Festival will feature a bunch of short videos introducing authors and their latest books to new audiences - including me and The Tribute. I've scored a weekend pass for the whole festival - check out the program!
Contact
For publicity enquiries regarding The Tribute, please contact the Publicity Manager at Affirm Press, Laura McNicol Smith:
laura.mcnicolsmith [at] affirmpress.com.au
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For rights and other author enquiries, please contact my literary agent, Catherine Drayton of InkWell Management:
catherine [at] inkwellmanagement.com
Author portraits by
Rebecca Taylor Photography
You can also find me on the Facepages:
Author portraits by Rebecca Taylor Photography