About the book

About 11 MINUTES: A Crime Novel of Melbourne’s 1976 Great Bookie Robbery

Six men. Eleven minutes. Australia’s greatest armed robbery. * As featured in The Age – Weekend Crime Feature by John Silvester. * On 21 April 1976, a crew of masked gunmen stormed Melbourne’s Victoria Club and vanished with what would now be worth $80 million. No arrests. No convictions. Within a decade, every man was dead. 11 MINUTES is a gritty, unflinching Australian noir crime novel based on the true events of The Great Bookie Robbery, written by someone who lived inside the world that shaped it. Told in sharp, fast prose, the novel plunges you into Melbourne’s underworld at its most volatile: the Painters & Dockers Waterfront War, violent union clashes, crooked cops, and a city where loyalties were currency and betrayal was fatal. What you’ll discover inside: A cinematic reconstruction of the 11-minute robbery that stunned Australia The rise of the crew, forged in the brutal Painters and Dockers gang wars Training, planning, and execution, how a perfect heist was built The aftermath, as Sydney’s Toecutters and the Kane brothers close in The slow unravelling of loyalty, greed, paranoia, and power A personal reckoning, told through the author’s connection to his brother Ian Carroll - one of the men who never walked away This is not a glamorised heist tale. This is what crime really costs. Inspired by lived experience and years of research, 11 Minutes blends the pace of a thriller with the emotional depth of a memoir. It’s Australian noir in the tradition of George V. Higgins, Andrew Nette, and gritty true crime that exposes not just what happened - but why. Perfect for readers who love: Crime fiction based on real events Heist thrillers with moral weight Organised crime stories set in Australia Dark, character-driven noir True-crime–adjacent fiction that goes beyond the headlines A powerful, atmospheric crime novel that reveals the human cost behind Australia’s most daring heist.

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