The Research Rabbit Hole: Samantha Battams

Some would say it’s because I’m a Gemini, but I have the habit of doing two projects at once aside from my regular career. True to form, this year I will have my first two books published: a true crime tale, The Secret Art of Poisoning and The Red Devil (written with Les Parsons). Researching …

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Crime and romance with Jane Austen: Toni Jordan

‘You’re in love with love,’ my mother told me once. I must have been all of fourteen: flat-chested, grinning in shiny braces, complete with frightening, jutting headgear I wore at night. I went to girls’ school and I had no brothers. No men in the house at all. When my mother said that, about being …

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A mug’s game? Janice Simpson on the profession of writing

A Body of Work, my second crime novel, is a police procedural with social twists, although there is scant in-depth detail about police methods. Rather, the novel focuses on the interactions of the people in the investigating team. Social themes explored include secret adoption as a way of dealing with an unwanted pregnancy; the personal …

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A killer setting for a psychological thriller

Megan Goldin   It’s remarkable that few thrillers are set in an office given the endless potential for intrigue and conflict in many, perhaps most, workplaces. Back-stabbing colleagues, behind-the-scenes machinations, office politics and a Darwinian fight for survival; there are few offices that don’t have an element of at least some of these characteristics. When …

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The perils of publishing overseas – Liz Porter reports 

It was early February this year and I had Readings St Kilda booked for a May launch of my third forensic science book Crime Scene Asia: when forensic evidence becomes the silent witness. Then it all went to hell. I found out that my Singapore publisher’s deal with their Australian distributor, Penguin, had died quietly …

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Hazel Edwards on same-sex marriage: Fiction prediction

Hazel Edwards, author of 200 books and most famously for her classic children’s book, There’s a Hippopotamus on Our Roof Eating Cake, has returned to crime. She writes: Recently my adult murder mystery Celebrant Sleuth became unexpectedly topical. I was correcting galley proofs on the day the same-sex marriage legislation was passed. Timely? Serendipitous? Or …

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