Face of Fortune

Face of Fortune is a 1961 novel by Australian writer James Workman. It was his third novel, though his first set in Australia.

Premise

A man, Conrad Deane, returns to the Australian town of Fortune after spending 12 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. He sets out to find the real criminal.

Reception

The Long Eaton Advertiser called it "a workman like job." '
Punch thought the characters were thin but that the story was solid "and enlivened by a vivid turn of phrase."
The Daily Herald felt the book "seems to have been compounded from two or three terse TV scripts, purple passages from the Great Australian Novel and extracts from a businessman's notebook about a town called Fortune." However the reviewer felt "Workman has strung these apparently disperate elements together with such skill that this is one of the few recent thrillers that has not tempted me to skip read."