Award-winning Sydney author, Natalie Conyer, is the subject of this Murder Monday. As ever, interviewed by Jacq Ellem.
Veteran cop Schalk Lourens is back in Shadow City. Now suspended and thinking of emigrating to Australia, whilst visiting his daughter in Sydney Lourens is swept up into a minefield of deceit and manipulation by an enemy more powerful and depraved than is imaginable.
Click below to view the video where Natalie talks about how she writes.
Natalie was born and grew up in Cape Town, but has lived in Sydney for many years.
She is a crime fiction tragic, so much so that she did a doctorate in it. Her first novel, Present Tense, won the 2020 Ned Kelly Award for Best Debut Crime Fiction. It was shortlisted for the Davitt Awards in both debut and general sections, and voted one of the books of the year by The Australian. It’s set in South Africa and starts with retired police chief Piet Pieterse who has been ‘necklaced’ in an apartheid-style execution. Veteran cop Schalk Lourens is trying to forget the past but Pieterse was his old boss, and Schalk finds the past has a way of infecting the present.
Its sequel, Shadow City, was released in September by Echo and is mostly set in Sydney.
Natalie’s short stories have won many prizes in the annual Sisters in Crime Scarlet Stiletto Competition. They have featured in anthologies, and a collection of her short stories will be published in 2024.
More info here.
Murder Monday interviews are available on Sisters in Crime’s YouTube channel at 6 pm once a month on a Monday.