Carmel Shute
It’s been a bumper year for women’s crime. And what better time to catch up than over the festive season. Sisters in Crime asked convenors, author members, Davitt Award judges, and winners to nominate their best holiday reads by women crime authors. We hope you enjoy the books they’ve nominated. Most are fairly recent but some are golden oldies.
This Estonian series has the classic crime tropes, think Agatha Christie meets Death in Paradise, with the added element of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads. The Talking Heads technique requires compelling writing and acting. This series has both, according to Sisters in Crime TV reviewer, Siobhan Mullany.
Sally Piper’s focus is directed more toward the consequences of crime on survivors (both the victim and their families); how exposure to violence and trauma can leave a dark tattoo on the soul of those caught up in the ripples of these events. And how these ripples can extend out across subsequent generations, affecting lives well into the future. This is what she explores in her new novel, Bone Memories.
A capacity crowd gathered on Saturday night (3 December) to celebrate Sisters in Crime’s 29th Scarlet Stiletto Awards at South Melbourne’s Rising Sun Hotel. Nicole Chamoun, star of Troppo, based on the book, Crimson Lake, by long-term member, Candice Fox, presented the awards, after first discussing her life in crime with award-winning author and podcaster, Vikki Petraitis.
Melbourne author, Louise Bassett, spoke about her debut novel, The Hidden Girl (Walker Books Australia) with Maggie Baron for November’s Author Spotlight. She says young adults often have a strong sense of justice so this makes them a great readership for crime fiction. They are also challenge you as a writer—you have to keep your story engaging because there are so many things competing for young adults’ attention.
Love it or hate it, there comes a point in every writer’s life when we can’t ignore it – we as writers will probably need to engage in marketing at some point in our careers. We need to let people know about our book, or just to reach out to readers and other writers to say we’re out there looking for great stories to read (if you’re out there and you have a psychological thriller with a twist I haven’t read, let me know where I can find it). . .
The series begins with a young woman cycling round her home town. She has been released from prison after serving her sentence for killing another young woman from the town. Sound familiar? This is not Troppo. Savage River is set in Victoria, not in far north Queensland.
A few bad apples gathered on Thursday 6 October 2022, withas well as some ring-ins from New Zealand, to celebrate the new Tasmanian Chapter of Sisters in Crime Australia at Frank’s Ciderhouse in the Huon Valley. Dr Angela Savage, CEO of Public Libraries Victoria, and Lindy Cameron, Vice-President of Sisters in Crime Australia were on hand to officially launch the new chapter.
Sisters in Crime Australia held its 2022 Annual General Meeting on Friday 28 October, following its Felony and Fun event at South Melbourne’s Rising Sun Hotel. It had convened a delayed 2021 AGM on Zoom only five months earlier but needed to get back in sync with the schedule required by Consumer Affairs Victoria. Nevertheless, it has broken many records!
Minotaur Books has separate debut novel competitions – First Crime Novel (closes 16 December 2022) and Malice Domestic First Traditional Mystery Novel with Mystery Writers of America (closes 30 November 2022).