Author Ross Gibson cleverly captures the world of Sydney in 1946 - sordid and bruised after decades of depredations. In The Summer Exercises, Gibson uses approximately 175 carefully selected black and white photographs from the collection of the Justice & Police Museum taken during the years immediately after World War II. These photographs, generated by NSW Police in the course of their investigations between 1945-1960, form a visual reference for a richly imagined story to take place.

Anchored in the realities of 1940s Sydney police investigative procedure, the work is an artistic re-invention of history as it happened.