Gregory M Carroll

I am not just the author of 11 Minutes. I lived in the shadow of the men who carried out Melbourne’s 1976 Great Bookie Robbery. I grew up in the same hard world. I knew the people. I saw what the violence, the money, and the silence did to families.

Ian Carroll was my brother. He was my best man — and later, I was the one who identified his body. That experience never leaves you. It doesn’t fade into history. It stays close.

This novel exists because the public story of the robbery ends at the heist. The real story begins after — when paranoia replaces loyalty, when greed fractures friendships, and when the consequences arrive quietly, one by one.

11 Minutes is not straight true crime. Facts can tell you what happened — dates, names, headlines. A novel can take you somewhere else entirely.

This book reaches past police reports and courtrooms into the quiet moments: the fear that doesn’t make the papers, the slow unravelling of trust, the weight of choices made when no one is watching.

I wrote this story to explore not just the crime, but the cost. What destroys criminal empires is rarely the police. It’s what happens inside — ambition, silence, loyalty turned brittle.

Escaping that world took work. Night school. Long hours. Distance. I moved into the early days of computing and eventually built two global technology companies.

I later earned a Master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence and wrote two award-recognised business books —21st Century Enterprise Risk Management and Risk Intelligence, the latter a quarter-finalist for the international BookLife Prize.

That background shaped how I approached 11 Minutes. I am interested in systems — how organisations fail, how pressure exposes weak points, and how risk compounds over time. Criminal crews are no different.

I now write from the Gold Coast, Australia, bringing lived experience, discipline, and clarity to stories rooted in real consequences.