Australia’s true crime queen, Robin Bowles, spoke to Sisters in Crime’s national co-convenor, Karina Kilmore, for this week’s Murder Mondays interview – the first one to feature true crime as opposed to fiction.
(Click on the image below to go to the YouTube recording.)
Robin has had a varied career. She had four children by the time she was 25 and worked as a nurse and PR consultant before taking up a life of crime in 1997 with her first book, Blind Justice, about the alleged suicide of a Victorian country housewife, Jennifer Tanner.
Since then she has written 16 true-crime best-sellers including the definitive books on the Jaidyn Leskie murder, Justice Denied, and the disappearance and alleged murder of British tourist Peter Falconio, Dead Centre. Dead Centre won Sisters in Crime’s inaugural Davitt Award for True Crime in 2006.
Robin’s books have sparked coronial inquiries and changes in State Government legislation and reopened investigations.
During her career as an investigative writer, Robin also obtained a university diploma to qualify as a private inquiry agent. She is now widely recognised as Australia’s True Crime Queen but has also published two novels, The Curse of the Golden Yo Yo followed by The Mystery of the Missing Masterpiece, plus a number of short stories.
Robin has also given a lot to the crime writing world. She was a convenor of Sisters in Crime for ten years and is now a life member.
Robin is also an accomplished Cordon Bleu cook and creates sensational jewelery.
Dead Centre has just been re-published in a much updated edition by Olympia Publishers, UK.
Murders Mondays are available on Sisters in Crime YouTube channel at 6pm on Mondays. Previous guests include Astrid Scholte, Jenny Blackford, Susan Hurley, Emma Viskic, Meg Mundell, J. P. Powell, Kerry Greenwood, Lili Wilkinson, Petronella McGovern, Heather Rose, Malla Nunn, Sara Paretsky, Judith Rossell, Sulari Gentill, Sarah Epstein, Mirandi Riwoe, Kerry McGinnis, Kathy Reichs, Ellie Marney, Katherine Kovacic, Candice Fox, Anne Buist, Dervla McTiernan and Val McDermid.