A sequence of interconnected narratives from pre-World War One to the 2020s, Mixed Business is Alan Wearne's latest contribution to the verse novel genre. With a cast of over one hundred characters, this book is a risky, imaginative, large-scale history of 20th and 21st Century urban Australia. Propelled at times (though never exclusively) by politics, there is of course plenty of room for satire. With all the muses contributing, the tales told range from tragicomedy to comedy to farce.