Townsville's underbelly is revealed in a shocking true story of tattooed, cocaine-snorting, gun-toting prostitute Lizzie O’Dea. The novel is set in the 1920s behind the city’s Causeway Hotel, once part of a notorious red light district where Lizzie and her standover man, husband Joe “Curly” O’Dea, could be found frequenting seedy bars. By day she was known as Lizzie O’Dea but her alias as a prostitute was Betty Knight. Townsville author and JCU writing lecturer Ariella Van Luyn has spent three years researching and writing the forgotten story into a book she has titled Treading Air, launched this week. For full story click here.