Now available from https://books.by/wayne-peake A Xmas Car Rally Puzzle, The Two of Hearts Mystery and the Great Trainers v Jockeys Cricket Match. All in one illustrated volume! Official launch Picnic Point Bowling Club Saturday 17 October 2026. All welcome.
The African Lion Safari...
Reviews of A Xmas Car Rally Puzzle
“I can think of nobody better than Wayne Peake to tell stories of the intrigues and complications of Sydney’s fascinating racing history, and the colourful characters who inhabited it. His stories capture the humour and essence of a time that so many of us remember with a sense of nostalgia and delight.”
Jim Haynes: Author, poet, historian, musician, 2GB broadcaster and long-lunch fancier.
“When Wayne Peake sits down to pen a full-length novel I think he should call it ‘Warwick Farm Revisited.’ If he draws on the style he has employed in ‘A Xmas Car Rally Puzzle’, which I read with a perma-smile on my face, it will have more than a hint of Evelyn Waugh in it. He strikes me as a writer who’s led all the way in his fiction debut at Kembla Grange and will come back for the features at Randwick in the Spring.”
John Harms: Age and Australian columnist, ABC television “Offsiders” panelist, author and humorist. Also a long-lunch fancier!
Warwick Farm racecourse
Purchase Sydney Racing in the 1970s via here
and farm produce stalls are locations in A Xmas Car Rally Puzzle.
Wayne Peake. Writer. Racing historian. Proud Peake of Peakhurst.
Chips Rafferty & Bob Mitchum are characters in The Great Trainers v Jockeys Cricket match.
The Sydney Jockey Club’s hard-nosed racecourse detective Rod Gallagher is a reluctant starter in its annual Xmas car rally. At the last moment he is also tasked with solving a cryptic puzzle during the rally to recover a priceless stolen racing heirloom. Oh and he must also win not to lose his millionaire girlfriend Chelsea on a bet. The rally takes Gallagher and co. on a one-day road-trip of 1960s western Sydney that includes racecourses, golf clubs, showgrounds, vineyards, pubs & the African Lion Safari, ending with a bizarre chase on the district’s showpiece homestead.
There are laughs and thrills aplenty in this Aussie slice of PG Wodehouse & Damon Runyon!