“Flawed Heroes” goes online

Sisters in Crime’s panel discussion event, Flawed Heroes, originally scheduled as a live show for 8pm Friday 3 April at South Melbourne’s Rising Sun Hotel, will now be Zoomed to the world.

Authors Emma Viskic, Karina Kilmore and Natalie Conyer will talk to Jacqui Horwood about the flawed heroes of their crime novels as they grapple with an equally flawed world. We’ll be filming the panel members individually from the relative safety of their own homes (though not in their pyjamas, they assure us).

Over the weekend, we’ll upload Friday night’s recording to YouTube and then post up via the Sisters in Crime’s website, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. We’ll also send out a link via email on Monday 6 April (make sure you’re subscribed to our newsletter here so that you can enjoy what our authors have to say no matter where you are in the world).

Sisters in Crime is seeking your help as we faces the challenges (such as no income!) of the brave new world of the coronavirus pandemic. We’re inviting you to show your support by buying a ticket to the event for just $10. Bookings close 6 pm Friday 3 April.

As an added incentive, three lucky ticket holders will score crime book packs worth $150 each, to be posted out anywhere in Australia (apologies to overseas fans – international postage is just too expensive!) The packs contain the following books:

• Emma Viskic, Darkness for Light (Echo Publishing); Karina Kilmore, Where the Truth Lies (Simon & Schuster); Natalie Conyer, Present Tense (Clan Destine Press); Kathy Reichs, A Conspiracy of Bones (Simon & Schuster); Kerry Tucker with Craig Henderson, Prisoner (Penguin Random House)
• Emma Viskic, Darkness for Light (Echo Publishing); Karina Kilmore, Where the Truth Lies (Simon  & Schuster); Natalie Conyer, Present Tense (Clan Destine Press); Caroline de Costa¸ Missing Pieces (Wild Dingo Press); Sue Smethurst & Margaret Harrod, Blood on the Rosary (Simon & Schuster)
•  Emma Viskic, Darkness for Light (Echo Publishing); Karina Kilmore, Where the Truth Lies (Simon & Schuster); Natalie Conyer, Present Tense (Clan Destine Press); Jennifer Lane, All Our Secrets (Rosa Mira Books); Vikki Petraitis, Once a Copper: The life and times of Brian ‘The Skull’ Murphy (Wild Dingo Press)

Emma Viskic’s critically acclaimed Caleb Zelic series has been published worldwide and won numerous awards. Her hero is irrepressibly stubborn and emotionally repressed or, as one reader put it, ’emotionally constipated’. His stubbornness is one of his strengths – it is how he succeeds in a hearing world despite being profoundly deaf – but it is also his biggest failing. Even when his unwillingness to let go threatens his life or his marriage, he just can’t give in.

Emma’s debut novel, Resurrection Bay, won the 2016 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction and an unprecedented three Davitt Awards. It was shortlisted for the UK’s prestigious Gold Dagger and New Blood Awards, and was iBooks Australia’s Crime Novel of the Year. And Fire Came Down won the 2018 Davitt Award for Best Adult Crime Book and was longlisted for the Dublin International Literary Award. Darkness for Light (Echo Publishing) is out now. She is currently working on the fourth novel in the series. She undertook extensive research to create the character of Caleb Zelic, learning Auslan (Australian sign language). She is a classically trained clarinettist.

The hero of Karina Kilmore’s debut novel, Where the Truth Lies (Simon & Schuster), is the feisty but flawed journalist Chrissie O’Brian. Chrissie is escaping a criminal past in New Zealand and is struggling to fit into a new country. Parachuted into a senior job at The Argus, she struggles to fit into a newsroom, battling staff cuts and resentment. She soon suspects she has a big story on her hands: the death of a wharfie. This is just the sort of story she needs to crack open if she is to make her mark, but while she attempts to expose the secrets of others, she is desperately trying to keep her own failings hidden.

Karina is a finance writer, a former Herald Sun book editor and a surf lifesaving member.

Detective Schalk Lourens is the hero of Natalie Conyer’s debut thriller, Present Tense (Clan Destine Press), set in Cape Town where she was born and raised. Lourens is required toinvestigate the murder of retired police chief Piet Pieterse by ‘necklacing’, whereby a tyre is placed around the neck, doused in petrol and set alight. As a young cop, Lourens helped enforce South Africa’s apartheid regime. Now he is burdened by guilt for what he did then and is prepared to fight to ‘make things fair’; he can’t let go until justice is done. At the same time, he feels lost in the new, turbulent South Africa. He can’t work out who to trust, which leads him to make some dangerous decisions.

Present Tense was chosen as The Pick of the Week by The Age and Sydney Morning Herald on 25 January. Natalie’s short stories have won several awards in the Sisters in Crime Scarlet Stiletto competitions. She has just submitted her Doctorate in Creative Arts in (of course) crime fiction.

Jacqui Horwood works as a librarian at the State Library Victoria. She won the 2003 Scarlet Stiletto Award, the 2005 Award for Best Crime in Verse, and the 2016 Silver Stiletto. She was shortlisted for the 2019 Scarlet Stiletto Awards, and the 2015 and 2016 Ada Cambridge Biography in Prose Awards. Her short stories have been published in anthologies and e-zines. Jacqui is a former convenor of Sisters in Crime and was a Davitt Awards judge for ten years.

Tickets: $10 

Bookings: Eventbrite

And don’t forget you can go online to order Emma Viskic, Darkness for Light and Karina Kilmore, Where the Truth Lies from the Sun Bookshop  and Natalie Conyer, Present Tense from Clan Destine Press .

Additional information
Carmel Shute
0412 569 356
admin@sistersincrime.org.au