No smoking gun

Colin McLaren has already published two books drawing on his own remarkable experiences as an undercover policeman – On the Run (2009) and Infiltration: The True Story of the Man Who Cracked the Mafia (2009) – the former a work of fiction, the other autobiographical. In this latest work he merges the two forms to create a biographical novel of his beloved grandfather George Bingham, who, with a few mates, was among the first to enlist, in an Anzac battalion filled from rural Victoria within a fortnight of war being declared.

These soldiers covered themselves with glory, though it didn’t feel like it at the time. They were in the second wave at Gallipoli, and in the thick of the major battles in Europe. The point of McLaren’s novel, which is not quite the same thing as George Bingham’s story, is to recount the endurance of the original diggers and their loyalty to each other – and beyond that, to tell us about George, the ‘Sunflower’ of the title.