Sly of the Underworld

In 2020, John Silvester posed for a portrait by the artist Mica Pillemer. The picture is an arresting one: Silvester, in business attire, posing as a boxer. Behind him, the walls are plastered with newspapers and posters, a testament to his more than four decades of experience as a Melbourne crime reporter. His fists are raised, his dark eyes hold the viewer’s, his mouth is upturned with the faintest crook of a smile.

Silvester is the godfather of Australian true crime. As a reporter for The Sun and The Age, in his work on the ‘Naked City’ column and its associated podcast, Silvester has written some five million words on the subject of crime. In Dark City, which follows Naked City (2023), Silvester has trawled through this ocean of ink to present a collection of his choicest columns, arranged thematically in sections with titles such as ‘Crooks (and the not-so-crooked)’. Naked City was prefaced with appraisals of Silvester from ‘critics’ such as Tony Mokbel (‘bald-headed alien’) and Christopher Dean Binse (‘gutter lowlife rodent’). The journalist Nick McKenzie, more generous in his assessment, notes Silvester’s ‘fair and scrupulous’ journalism, his extensive network of contacts, and his longstanding commitment to advocating for justice for the victims of crime.