Round the Bend (novel) Round the Bend (novel) Round the Bend is a 1951 novel by Nevil Shute. It tells the story of Constantine "Connie" Shaklin, an aircraft engineer who founds a new religion transcending existing religions based on the merit of good work. It deals with racism, including the White Australia policy, and also with the importance of private enterprise. It was one of the first novels Shute wrote after emigrating from Britain to Australia in 1950. The novel, written in the first person, adopts the voice and eyes of Tom Cutter, an aircraft pilot, engineer, and entrepreneur. The novel starts with Cutter's
A Fix Like This A Fix Like This A Fix Like This is a crime novel by the American writer K.C. Constantine set in 1970s Rocksburg, a fictional, blue-collar, Rustbelt town in Western Pennsylvania (modeled on the author's hometown of McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, adjacent to Pittsburgh). Mario Balzic is the protagonist, an atypical detective for the genre, a Serbo-Italian American cop, middle-aged, unpretentious, a family man who asks questions and uses more sense than force. As the novel opens, Armand "Fat Manny" Manditti has been stabbed and is brought into the emergency room by his brother Tullio the Tub, who refuses to tell Chief