Open Invitation: Event Launch of Brunswick Street Blues

Join Sisters in Crime NT member, Sally Bothroyd, as she talks to Carmel Shute about her debut novel, Brunswick Street Blues (HarperCollins Publishers), winner of the inaugural ASA/HQ Commercial Fiction Prize, courtesy of the Sun Bookshop in Yarraville.

The twists keep piling up in this fun and distinctively Australian mystery which starts with the discovery of a dead mayor in a locked room at Yarra Council by Brick Brown. Brick has finagled herself a job in the PR Department to investigate a complaint that threatens to close her uncle’s well-loved blues club in the heart of Melbourne – and meanwhile, her uncle has disappeared.

She’s dragged into the dangerous world of dodgy developers with the reluctant help of Mitch Mitchell, a prickly war correspondent turned investigative journalist. Relying on her street smarts and an unlikely band of allies, Brick and Mitchell unearth corruption that runs deeper than just local government, and the stakes are higher than they banked on. And when Brick also discovers some terrifying information about her past, the stakes turn deadly …

Sally Bothroyd (left) is currently the director of the Northern Territory Writers’ Centre, but before that worked for many years as a journalist – both in broadcast and in print – and has also made several short films that have appeared at film festivals around Australia and overseas.

She’s a longtime fan of crime fiction and had a short story shortlisted for Sisters in Crime’s 2019 Scarlet Stiletto Awards.

Carmel Shute is a co-founder of Sisters in Crime, a current convenor, and spent 15 years working in local government PR.