A Green Light: Book 1: The Kingdom of Children

In Book 1 of A GREEN LIGHT: THE KINGDOM OF CHILDREN crime writer, playwright and screenwriter, Ray Mooney, masterfully explores the development of an ordinary boy into a cold-blooded killer.

Johnny Morgan is born into a suburban working class catholic family where he matures, on the one hand, within the strict regime of Catholicism and on the other, within a knockabout world where brute force and cunning are the preferred means of dealing with authority and survival.

The result is a value system of never dob anyone in, a misunderstanding and arrogance of sexual knowledge, and a yearning to be thought of as the best.

Morgan discovers there is a natural order of balance within society, and that forces of disorder, such as himself, are soon brought to task; that certain individuals are given an unofficial green light to have their way with him. He learns he can withdraw their green light by disrupting the natural order.

Morgan excels in street-wise cunning, a larrikin delinquent, torn between the feral and the ordinary human being.

The story is based on the author’s personal experiences, and those of his close friend, Chris Flannery, aka Mr Rent-A-Kill, Australia’s infamous hitman, missing, believed murdered.

The Kingdom of Children is approximately 58,000 words and is specifically formatted for Kindle, with an interactive table of contents.

The series has been developed from Mooney’s highly successful book, A Green Light, published by Penguin, Australia, in 1988, which became Penguin’s second biggest fiction seller for that year and established an industry of crime fiction within Australia.

Praise for Ray Mooney’s crime thriller A GREEN LIGHT.

Ray Mooney’s A Green Light, the most powerful crime fiction book I’ve ever read. – Alex Miller, Booktopiablog 2013

‘This is the most important and powerful book on crime ever written in Australia, if not anywhere.’ -- Barry Webster, Pulp Fiction, 3RRR.

‘Mooney’s handling of underworld dialogue is masterful...What we have in Johnny Morgan is an absorbing character study of one of the most unpleasant sides of modern-day society.’ -- Ian Freckleton, the Age.

‘A novel with the ferocious veracity of A GREEN LIGHT should make us all stop and think, and think again, about the patterns of power in our society’ -- Professor Stephen Knight, Sydney Morning Herald.

‘If the book stimulates one to think about crime, as it did for me, then it goes some of the way to meeting a higher goal. In the context of crime and prison literatuire I think A GREEN LIGHT is a valuable contribution.’ -- Michael Bersten, Lawyer, Legal Service Bulletin.

Dr Jocelynne Scutt wrote, ‘...for those of us who care about changing the mindless world of men, A Green Light is compulsory reading.’

About the author

Ray Mooney is a specialist in crime, regarded by many as Australia’s best fiction crime writer.

He’s written more than 20 plays specialising in crime, numerous films scripts, including the cult film, Everynight Everynight, co-authored with director Alkinos Tsilimidos and nominated for an AFI writing award. The film received numerous awards throughout the world.

His non-fiction book, A Pack of Bloody Animals, about the Walsh Street murders, set the cat among the pigeons, with its sensational revelations within police and criminal cultures.

He taught novel writing at tertiary institutions for twenty years.

A Green Light: Book 1 - The Kingdom of Children is approximately 58,000 words and is specifically formatted for Kindle, with an interactive table of contents.