Snapshot Interviews

Australian Crime Fiction Snapshot - Alex Palmer

CrimeDownUnder — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 08:29:00 +1100

1. Reading your first novel, Blood Redemption, which I have just finished and enjoyed immensely, I was struck by the complexity of each of the principle characters, Paul Harrigan, Grace Riordan and Lucy Hurst. There appears to be an effort made to make all 3 sympathetic characters, would this be a reasonable observation?

This is an interesting question. Starting with Lucy, I wasn’t attempting to excuse her – what she did was terrible - but to explain her actions. I called Blood Redemption a ‘whydunit ‘ as opposed to a ‘whodunit’. For Lucy, I was unwinding the consequences of her past. Abuse of a single individual almost always spreads further than that one person. What I am really interested in and what I try to explore in my books is the psychology of violence and its effects on people. Which is one reason why I write crime because then people who are reading me will know what to expect. With Harrigan and Grace, I was interested in the effects of both dealing constantly with violence as a part of your profession and also being its victim. For Harrigan particularly, this is something I explore at greater depth in Tattooed Man. So I wanted to get into both their heads. Also my 3rd novel is a Harrigan-Grace novel and deals with Grace and her memories of violence, just as Tattooed Man does for Harrigan. If you are going to write three novels with the same characters, I think they have to be complex to maintain the interest. So I didn’t think consciously that I will make these people sympathetic. I thought more along the lines of I want to know who they are and what makes them tick. Your character has to interest, even if you are repelled by them as with a character like Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley.

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Australian Crime Fiction Snapshot - Angela Savage

CrimeDownUnder — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 15:57:00 +1100

1. Congratulations on the success of Behind The Night Bazaar. Your private detective heroine Jayne Keeney is a devotee of hardboiled crime. Was she based on any hardboiled character or has she been given her own personality? Follow-up: She strikes me as more a resourceful detective rather than forceful, will she be able to continue solo or is she likely to get a sidekick, as we often see with many other series?

It's ironic that my private detective heroine Jayne Keeney is a devotee of hardboiled crime because she's read a few books I haven't! Far from being based on any hardboiled character, she's more like a person I might have been had I made different life choices. That said, I think I've made better choices than Jayne--though whether we'd see eye-to-eye on that is another matter.

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Australian Crime Fiction Snapshot - Chris Womersley

CrimeDownUnder — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 19:56:00 +1100

1. You've managed to instil a deep level of hopelessness right from the opening chapter in The Low Road, it's very atmospheric. Were you concerned that readers might be put off by just how bleak the mood is? Taking that thought a bit further, did you write with the reader in mind or did you simply follow where the story took you?

I took it as a challenge to construct a tale that could still be compelling despite its at times rather bleak atmosphere and characters that were still sympathetic despite their flaws. To be honest, there was a part of me that savoured the experience of writing something that for a long time I thought would never see the light of day anyway. It gave me a great freedom. As Pat Barker has said: “You must always ask yourself ‘what is the book I would write if I knew it wasn’t going to be published?’”.

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Australian Crime Fiction Snapshot - David A. Rollins

CrimeDownUnder — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 16:30:00 +1100

1. So far we've seen two "series" with one featuring Australian SAS soldier Tom Wilkes and the other featuring Special Agent Vin Cooper. The first feels more Australian-centric while The Death Trust and A Knife Edge has more of an "aimed at an international audience" feel to it. Is that a reasonable observation?

Yes, it is. I came to the conclusion – rightly or wrongly – that not even Australians are prepared to believe that an Australian can save the world. (I’m sure some of your readers might have a contrary point of view on that). I decided that if I wanted to entertain more people – an international audience along with a domestic one - I probably needed a different style of hero. Tom Wilkes was also archetypically heroic and not a lot of fun to be around (or write about). Cooper is a different kind of hero. He has a laconic, wiseass sense of humour, a lack of respect for authority and he’s not in the least PC. In fact, the guy could easily be an Aussie (except that he’s from New Jersey).

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Australian Crime Fiction Snapshot - Geoff McGeachin

CrimeDownUnder — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 20:45:00 +1100

1. The humorous spy novel is not a field that we see many books cover these days, yet the James Bond movies often tend towards the whimsical and are very popular. Is there a touch of James Bond in the acting Director-General of D.E.D, Alby Murdoch?

Alby is of course out of a job as acting DG after crossing the Defence Minister. He also wasn’t well suited for management as he realized after discovering that six months into the job he was already eight months behind in his paperwork. Unlike Mr. Bond Alby is just stumbling through, very much like the rest of us.

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Australian Crime Fiction Snapshot - James Phelan

CrimeDownUnder — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 15:10:00 +1100

1. With two Lachlan Fox thrillers now out, FOX HUNT and PATRIOT ACT, and global terror warnings beamed into our loungerooms every night, do you find yourself spoilt for choice with possible storylines to give him?

With the end of the Cold War, quite a few thriller writers at my end of the genre were left scratching their heads looking for a new enemy to write about. Since S11, yes, there's plenty more fodder for us writers but it's also a situation that requires much more delicacy and finesse. Gone are the days when we could write about 'black hat' wearing bad guys up against a force we knew was good, ie the Yanks or Brits. These days, we constantly see footage on the internet and on TV of horrific things occurring in the Mid East, Africa, and closer to home. We now have a much more cynical view of our own political leaders who have been proved time and time again of lying to us. So, yes, there are now plenty more plausible storylines out there, it's just a matter of getting the right balance between producing an entertaining read and staying true to the circumstances we are living in. Some might say "this is fiction, leave truth at the door" but for me, the most powerful element of writing a thriller is that it is a snapshot of the time and place that I am writing about.
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Australian Crime Fiction Snapshot - Katherine Howell

CrimeDownUnder — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 16:18:00 +1100

1. Your first novel FRANTIC has been a big success and congratulations on an engrossing read. The story features 2 very strong female characters in Sophie Phillips and Ella Marconi, both put under extreme pressure. Were you consciously aiming for this powerful dual lead or is that the nature of their jobs? How closely did you draw off your experience as a paramedic for Sophie?

I always wanted to use the paramedic angle, but I also wanted to develop a series. Having a paramedic protagonist as the ongoing character was going to be a problem, though, because it wasn't plausible to have her rush about the city solving crime or going through some incredibly difficult and traumatic experience in each book. Detective Ella Marconi was the answer: she could give the procedural angle on the story, she could provide access to information about the case that the paramedic could never have, plus she was another point of view so allowed the reader a break from the shellshocked mind of Sophie.

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Australian Crime Fiction Snapshot - Lindy Cameron

CrimeDownUnder — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 16:19:00 +1100

1. You've done the private investigator thing with Kit O'Malley to great success and a couple of Davitt Awards and a Ned Kelly Award, basing the stories largely around the Melboune locale, now you've tackled the action thriller set on a global scale with your latest book REDBACK. What prompted the switch? And how difficult was it to research the diverse locations?

I was getting so annoyed with the way things were going in the War for Terror that I felt it was time to turn my own attention to the wider world, and channel some of my frustration into fiction.

Also Kit’s world is very Melbourne, very Australian and, being a PI crime, also very personal. I wanted to take on the world.

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Australian Crime Fiction Snapshot - Mark Abernethy

CrimeDownUnder — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 08:34:00 +1100

1. Do you find yourself scouring newspapers, watching the evening news and reading Internet news sites picking up likely future plots? Golden Serpent was such a full-on action thriller, yet given world events over the last few years, no scenario seems too outrageous any more. Do you find that frees you up or make you feel more restricted?

Yes, all of my stories comes from the media and all of my characters are based either on people I’ve read about or people I know. In Golden Serpent the head bad guy is Abu Sabaya, from Mindanao. He is real as is the story that he was gunned down by Philippines and US commandos in 2002; 10 days later, a priest on one of the islands in the Sulu chain told a newspaper that Sabaya was still alive because he’d seen him walking around. And from there came an idea for a book… But I don’t scour the media for stories I just sort of absorb them. I also read a lot of the boring stuff: the Senate inquiries, the house committee reports, the judicial inquiries and the auditor general’s reports. Mostly these things are stripped for their news value in the media, but they’re full of gems if you can be bothered. I find that sticking closely with the truth frees me up because it’s more fun to write about the way things are than creating an alternative world.

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Australian Crime Fiction Snapshot - Michael Robotham

CrimeDownUnder — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 22:23:00 +1100

1. You have utilised an interesting, hmm, shall we say tool(?) with your first 3 novels taking minor characters and using them in subsequent books. This may be a bit chicken and egg but, did you plan it this way or did you see the potential in Ruiz and Alisha Barba only after the earlier book was finished?

I know it sounds like I’m a borderline psychotic, but my characters are as real to me as any living breathing subjects of the books I used to ghostwrite. When I was a ghostwriter, each time I took on a project I got to look at the world through a fresh set of eyes. That’s what I love about shuffling my main characters around and introducing new ones. I never write a character and think I’ll use them again in another book. I let the story idea decide who the narrator should be.

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