Moonlite

A gay bushranger with a love of poetry and guns.A grotesque hangman with a passion for flowers and gardening.A broken young man desperate for love and respect.These men - two of them lovers - are about to bring the era of Australia's outlaws to a torrid and bloody climax.Charismatic, intelligent and handsome, George Scott was born into a privileged life in famine-wracked Ireland. His family lost its fortune and fled to New Zealand. There, Scott joins the local militia and after recovering from gunshot wounds, sails to Australia.One night he dons a mask in a small country town, arms himself with a gun and, dubbing himself Captain Moonlite, brazenly robs a bank before staging one of the country's most audacious jailbreaks. After falling in love with fellow prisoner James Nesbitt, a boyish petty criminal desperately searching for a father figure, Scott finds himself unable to shrug off his criminal past. Pursued and harassed by the police, he stages a dramatic siege and prepares for a final showdown with the law - and a macabre executioner without a nose.Told at a cracking pace, and based on many of the extensive letters Scott wrote from his death cell, Moonlite is set amid the violent and sexually-repressed era of Australia in the second half of the 19th century."e;Linnell recounts with gusto Scott's early forays in the Pacific and leads the reader into tales of his robbery in the goldfields, capture, escape, recapture and then prison romance."e; The Canberra Times