Greg Woodland Books In Order

Publication Order of Mick Goodenough Books

Greg Woodland is a crime, mystery and horror fiction author best known for his debut novel “The Night Whistler.” In his other life he is a consultant and script developer for the Australian Writers Guild and several film funding bodies which is something he has been doing for more than twenty five years.
He is also the director and founder of “Script Central,” a notable Australian script service. Working as a director and writer, he has won several awards for his documentaries and short films that have been screened on more than 60 TV Channels and film festivals across the world.

He has won several script competitions including the prestigious Varuna Fellowship. In addition to his writing, he has lectured about Scriptwriting at AFTRS, Macquarie University, NIDA and UTS. Greg also has several film editing credits for award winning films across the spectrum.

At the age of 4,Greg Woodland’s mother read him the harrowing and tumultuous story of “Pookie the Rabbit” and he was hooked. He spent much of his childhood growing up in the small town of South Tamworth in New South Wales.

His father was a commercial traveller who was away for weeks on end and his mother a housewife that for the most part brought up the children all alone. It was during this time that his mother was tormented for almost a full year by a man we would now refer to as a stalker.

She would call him the prowler, nuisance caller and the whistler and as much as she tried to keep him secret from the children, those old enough knew about him. To children such as Greg, he was a menacing and mysterious bogeyman that always seemed to evade all attempts by the cops or their father to catch him.
He would always come back when they were gone, tapping under the floor and on the windows and scaring them all.

After he graduated from high school he went to the University of New England to study zoology. But he would quit the course and his university courses as a third year and left to go do a series of odd jobs.

A year later he had worked as a brick cleaner, a dishwasher and a guitarist in a rock band when he decided to move back to Sydney where he still makes his home.

As for how he came to write his novel, Greg Woodland has said that he once penned a paranormal – horror/vampire novel that was unpublished and for some time he thought he should take another stab at publishing.

Since he read a lot of crime fiction from the likes of Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes, he thought there was some truth to writing what you liked to read. “The Whistler” had been written initially as a screenplay and had been lying in his bottom drawer for several years.

It was a dark noir story set in the 1960s in the small town where he had been brought up. Woodland believed it would make for a good idea for a crime story in a rural setting. But first he needed two strong men – a smart and charismatic detective persistent and courageous enough to catch a cruel cunning and unnerving psychopath.
Greg wanted to write someone that goes against the system and hence he wrote his lead as a former homicide detective that had experienced some tragic trauma following an unsolved murdercase. This had put him at odds with his colleagues and ultimately he was demoted to probationary constable and packed off to a small rural town.

But his saving grace is that his inability to obey orders means he is the perfect person ro solve a heinous crime.

“The Night Whistler” by Greg Woodland is the story of detective Mick Goodenough who has two things against him right from the start. He is an indigenous Australian that has just been demoted from detective to probationary constable. He has also been posted to the small town of Moorabool as the lowest ranking officer.

But the man likes to think as a detective even as his new boss delights in reminding him that he is not one. In the meantime, a twelve year old boy named Hal is back in Moorabool where his father has a new job. He is yet to make any friends until he is taken crawbobbing by an indigenous girl named Allie.
She tells him of the Highway Palace where spirits are trapped following a murder and suicide incident several years before. Hal wants to know more about the child that survived the incident and thinks he could be the one making strange and threatening calls to people in the village.
Woodland writes vivid descriptions that bring his characters to life as you can hear the voices, taste the dust and smell the heat.