Women crime writers are in the spotlight, being interviewed about their books, their lives and more.
The original inspiration for The Scarlet Cross came from my sister, who is an avid crime reader and a former psychiatric nurse. She was the one who suggested a hospital as the setting for a crime novel and I heartily agreed: the caregivers in a hospital are often at the coal face of crime, especially in the emergency department.
For me, Indigo is Batman in Chanel. Like Batman, her superpower is that she’s ridiculously rich. However, unlike Batman, she doesn’t go looking for crime to fight, rather crime comes looking to pick a fight with her.
I have to admit to a preference for happy endings! I should probably say ‘endings with possibilities’, after all it makes for a much more rounded character if they have a solid backstory, so why not a future?
Fiction is wonderful, because you can explore people’s motivations, and their back story, and you can make them do this, or that, and not have to worry about sticking to the ‘real’ story which is what you have to do in journalism. I find it very liberating.
The day PETA put their Farm Maps up onto the website and animal activists were trespassing onto farms, I was driving to Perth, listening to the ABC report on this atrocity. I was getting angrier and angrier and my speed was getting faster and faster, the more furious I became! I knew I needed to tell the farmer’s side of the story.
There are two main differences between Italian and Australian women’s crime fiction. In Italian texts, murders are mostly motivated by jealousy or greed, and on the whole, there is less emphasis on family violence and on rape than in Australian fiction. The other noticeable difference is the emphasis on linguistic and cultural identity in the various Italian regions.
UK best-selling author, Robyn Harding, discloses to Maggie Baron how a real-life experience inspired her latest novel, The Perfect Family.
Fiona McIntosh holds a mirror to UK law and sentencing as she discusses her new novel, Mirror Man, with Maggie Baron.
Singapore-based author, Shamini Flint, talks to Robyn Walton about her latest book, The Beijing Conspiracy (Allen & Unwin), which marks a radical departure from her Inspector Singh series
Veronica Gorrie drew on her lived experience as a Gunai/Kurnai woman and former police officer for her book Black and Blue: A Memoir of Racism and Resilience (Scribe Publications). Through her sharp wit and engaging storytelling, she takes us on her journey as an Aboriginal person who joined the white, male-dominated Queensland police.