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Reimagining the sleuth
April 19 @ 8:00 pm
The sleuth in crime fiction is no longer a cop or PI. Three authors explore some of the new-style investigators now at work.
For Haque-based author, Lisa Medved (The Engraver’s Secret), it’s a contemporary art historian exploring a mystery in the 17th century world of Reubens. For Sulari Gentill from Batlow, NSW (The Mystery Writer), it’s the aspiring author herself who finds something sinister going on in the world of publishing and has to unravel the mystery before she becomes the next victim. For Melbourne-based author, Aoife Clifford, the title says it all: It takes a town. . . to solve a murder. Interrogating the authors is multi-award-winning author, Emma Viskic.
Lisa Medved’s first novel,The Engraver’s Secret (HarperCollins Australia) was born out of a passion for history and art, a curiosity in the life of a little-known Flemish engraver and his relationship with a world-renowned painter, and a desire to explore the secrets that can lie beneath the surface of family dynamics.
Her sleuth is the contemporary art historian Charlotte Hubert who moves to Antwerp to research her hero, the Baroque master Rubens, and to seek answers about the father she’s never met. But a startling discovery hidden inside an ancient map folio turns Charlotte’s quiet academic life into a dangerous hunt for long-lost treasures, missing for 400 years. In the shadowy cloisters of the university, where ambition, obsession, and violence run deep, nothing is as it seems. . .
The Mystery Writer (Ultimo Press) by Sulari Gentill features Australian Theo (Theodosia) Benton who has one dream – to become a bestselling author. She heads to the US on a whim to stay with her brother Gus and focus on her writing. But her plans take an unexpected turn when she befriends a famous author, Dan Murdoch, at a local bar – and then he turns up dead. Suddenly, Theo finds herself as the prime suspect. With her own life in danger, Theo must unravel the mystery before she becomes the next victim. . .
Sulari is the author of the multi-award-winning Rowland Sinclair Mysteries, a series of (currently) ten historical crime novels set in 1930s’ Australia. Her widely praised standalone novel, Crossing the Lines, won the Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Novel, and was short-listed for the Davitt Award. Most recently, Sulari was awarded a Copyright Agency Cultural Fund Fellowship for The Woman in the Library (also set in the USA). Sulari lives in a small country town in the Australian Snowy Mountains where she grows French Black Truffles and writes. She remains in love with the art of storytelling.
In Aoife Clifford’s latest novel, It takes a town… to solve a murder (Ultimo Press) of glamorous Vanessa Walton. A celebrity since a television commercial when she was a child, Vanessa is back on the front page for all the wrong reasons, After a terrible storm, she has been found dead at the bottom of her stairs. At first, her death seems to be a simple accident, but anonymous letters are discovered that suggest otherwise – and when 16-year-old Jasmine Landridge claims it is murder, she suddenly disappears. As the police begin to investigate, secrets are exposed and friendships unravel. . .
Aoife is the author of All These Perfect Strangers, which was long-listed for both the Australian Industry General Fiction Book of the Year and the Voss Literary Prize, and Second Sight, a Publishers Weekly (starred review) and PW Pick for Book of the Week. Aoife’s short stories have been published in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, winning premier prizes such as the Scarlet Stiletto (plus numerous category awards) and the S.D. Harvey Ned Kelly Award.
Host Emma Viskic is one of Australia’s foremost crime writers, and author of the critically acclaimed series featuring deaf sleuth, Caleb Zelic. Her debut novel, Resurrection Bay, took the crime fiction world by storm in 2015, winning the Ned Kelly Award for Best Debut and an unprecedented three Davitt Awards. It was voted one of the decade’s best novels by Crime Time Magazine and shortlisted for the UK’s prestigious Gold Dagger and New Blood Awards. The sequels garnered a further two Davitt Awards and nominations for prizes such as the Dublin Literary Award, the USA’s Barry Award, and the Ned Kelly Award. She is currently working on a novel inspired by her family’s brush with a violent episode in Australia’s history.
Men or ‘brothers-in-law’ welcome.
Sun Bookshop stall: members receive a 10% discount
Additional information: Carmel Shute 0412 569 356 admin@sistersincrime.org.au