Brian O’Malley is a retired Australian Federal public servant with experience in law enforcement functions and wide range of work and travel experience.

Has has won the ACT Marjorie Graber-McInnes short story competition and was short listed in Shoalhaven national short story competition.

He has been an amateur genealogist for 40 years, has lived in United Kingdom for 8 years, and two years in Canada on secondment to Canadian Government.

Brian has uncovered the dark secret taken to the grave by a founding father of Australia’s 1901 Federal Parliament, ‘King’ O’Malley.

A 100 year old scrapbook of family memorabilia.

In the book is an errant photograph of a high-profile namesake of the author – a politician and member of the first Australian Federal Parliament. This arouses curiosity about a possible family connection.

During the 1890s this parliamentarian obfuscates his past, claiming Canadian birth to enable him to stand for Australian parliament, elaborating a fantastical story of his nativity and early years in North America to enable him to be elected.

Reconstructing the purported family tree of the main actor reveals a family in New Haven, which was the centre of a sensational murder in 1881 and the subsequent trial in 1882 . The trial was a national and internationally identified miscarriage of justice, bankrolled by an uncle of the accused. Witnesses and the judiciary allegedly have their mouths ‘covered with greenbacks’.  The author locates a photograph of the accused  –  James Malley – and it bears a striking resemblance to the Australian Politician ‘King’ O’Malley – and the journey begins…