Winner of the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction King of the Cross is crime fiction unlike any other. Hilarious, violent, subversive and gripping, Mark Dapin's award-winning novel explores the world of Jacob Mendoza: ruler of Kings Cross and, for more than forty years, Australia's most powerful and infamous crime figure. Now in his eighties, Mendoza decides to employ a hapless young journalist to ghostwrite his memoir. As Mendoza reveals his epic life of thugs and drugs, murders and mayhem, crooked cops and girls, girls, girls, it appears that he's not the only one with a past. And as his story develops, other more terrifying criminals are circling the kingdom that Mendoza built. 'Dapin is a writer who punches with both hands and winks at the crowd while he's at it. His protagonist is part punk, part pug, part poet - an anti-hero who reveals his own back story as he gets the King of the Cross to unravel the eerily familiar tale of his unlikely rise. Truth might be stranger than fiction but in the hardened artery of Dapin's Kings Cross, alleged fiction rings truer than the alleged facts. A cunning stunt that could get him knee-capped.' Andrew Rule, author of Underbelly 'Profane, funny and sometimes confronting . . . This book is not for the easily offended. Hilarious . . . outrageous . . . It's a wild, macho ride.' Sydney Morning Herald 'I laughed out loud . . . There are some brilliant linguistic gymnastics. Dapin brings to the book the quirky, insightful turn of phrase that makes his newspaper columns for Good Weekend mandatory reading . . . a funny, over-the-top, well-written read.' Stephen Romei, Australian Literary Review 'Punctuated by lacerating comic dialogue and scenes of explosive violence, full of the kind of inventive word play and thinly veiled social commentary that make Florida-based crime author Carl Hiaasen so much fun to read - and, as with Hiaasen, there's ample substance beneath the dialogue.' The Age 'Dapin does a fine job of interweaving Mendoza's reminiscences of past crimes and crimes with a brutal story of current criminal intrigue. Although fiction, Dapin's no-holds barred history of Kings Cross and the city's criminal past rings true and his portrayal of modern Sydney is also brutally honest.' Canberra Times 'Explosive, gritty, hilarious and - best of all - truly original. This book detonates while you're reading it.' Robert Drewe.