CENTRE STAGE Nick Gadd

Photo by Susan Gordon-Brown

Congratulations to Stereo Stories writer Nick Gadd on the publication of his second novel, Death of a Typographer, launched in Melbourne on 10 October. The novel is a very entertaining, very quirky crime thriller about typography, fonts, and a typo-killer, with occasional references to Dutch prog-rock band I Am A Dolphin.

According to the Wikipedia entry in the appendix of the novel, I Am A Dolphin were formed in 1969 by singer Pim van Rok, guitarist Dik van Kok, and Jan van Groove who sits upon the drum stool…Van Rok described the band’s sound as ‘a trippy, floogy headspace’.

You like crime novels? You like fonts? You’ll love this book.

Death of a Typographer is published by Arcadia/Australian Scholarly Publishing.

Nick’s first Stereo Story was an extract from his award-winning 2008 novel Ghostlines.

The guy selling the sax was over sixty, a retired postman, but he played ten times better than Philip ever would. He couldn’t believe Philip had never heard Coltrane and refused to let him leave until they had repeatedly listened to A Love Supreme.

Nick then followed up with tender family stories based on Vince Jones’ version of All Or Nothing At All, and Massive Attack’s Protection. Both have been performed in concert with The Stereo Stories Band, as has Nick’s driving-lessons story about The Suburbs by Arcade Fire.

His riff on Talking Head’s Once In A Lifetime is a triumph of juxtaposition, rhythm and ideas as he explores a teenager’s search for self-identity:

You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
You may find yourself in a beautiful house with a beautiful wife
You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?

Or you may find yourself on a frozen sports field while the game goes on fifty metres away. You may find yourself staring at chemical formulae that don’t make sense. You may find yourself in a flailing fist fight. You may feel out of place, out of sync, out of step. You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?

Rounding out Nick’s back catalogue are stories about Cliff Richard’s Summer Holiday and Lee Morgan’s The Sidewinder.

The Nick Gadd Stereo Stories Collection

Nick Gadd

Nick is a multi-award-winning novelist, essayist and blogger. He is the author of the crime novels Ghostlines (2008) and Death of a Typographer (2019), and the memoir Melbourne Circle (2020). His work has appeared in various publications including Meanjin, Kill Your Darlings, Griffith Review and The Guardian.