Some of the most interesting crime writing these days has an historical bent. A large and appreciative crowd packed South Melbourne’s Rising Sun Hotel to hear Toni Jordan, M J Tjia and Kirsten Alexander talk to Alison Goodman about why digging into the past provides such deadly themes and characters for crime writing. (Interestingly, all three …
Sisters in Crime is thrilled to discover that Geelong Cemeteries Trust has created a unique walking tour of the Geelong Eastern Cemetery, called History Alive, which features Ellen Davitt, author of Australia’s first full-length mystery novel, Force and Fraud, in 1865. Visitors are guided around by actors playing the parts of ‘residents’ of the cemetery, …
Robyn Walton, Sisters in Crime’s Vice-President, spoke to Sydney author, Laura Elizabeth Woollett, about her book Beautiful Revolutionary (Scribe, 2018) which has just been longlisted for the 2019 Australian Literature Society (ALS) Gold Medal. Hi Laura. You give your readers a fictionalized account of the rise and fall of the Peoples Temple cult, which ended with …
Sisters in Crime President, Robyn Walton, spoke to US author, Lisa Unger, about her latest psychological thriller, Under My Skin (2018). Hello, and congratulations on your publication record: 16 novels and a novella. In 2018 Bouchercon, the annual mystery convention, was held in your US hometown. How was that? Thank you so much! Bouchercon always …
New Zealand is a country of firsts, and Rotorua Noir was its debut crime fiction convention, held over the Australia Day weekend, 2019. The venue, appropriately the Shambles Theatre, was small, but a perfect confab resulted. Writers appeared from NZ, but also Australia (Michael Rowbotham), Iceland, Finland and the North of the British Isles. Rotorua …
‘You’re in love with love,’ my mother told me once. I must have been all of fourteen: flat-chested, grinning in shiny braces, complete with frightening, jutting headgear I wore at night. I went to girls’ school and I had no brothers. No men in the house at all. When my mother said that, about being …
Robyn Walton, Sisters in Crime’s Vice-President, spoke to long-term member, Sandi Wallace, about her latest rural crime novel, Into the Fog (Taut Press, 2018). Sandi, congratulations on the third novel in your Georgie Harvey and John Franklin series. For your setting you chose the Dandenong Ranges, about an hour’s drive east of Melbourne CBD. And …
Robyn Walton. Sisters in Crime’s Vice-President, spoke to Perth author Leigh Straw about her latest book, Lillian Armfield: How Australia’s First Female Detective took on Tilly Devine and the Razor Gangs and Changed the Face of the Force (Hachette, 2018) Hi, Leigh. Most Australians would not be able to name this country’s first woman police …
A Body of Work, my second crime novel, is a police procedural with social twists, although there is scant in-depth detail about police methods. Rather, the novel focuses on the interactions of the people in the investigating team. Social themes explored include secret adoption as a way of dealing with an unwanted pregnancy; the personal …
Melbourne crime writer, Anna Snoekstra, spoke to Sisters in Crime’s Vice-President, Robyn Walton, about her latest thriller, The Spite Game (HQ Fiction, 2018). Hi, Anna. You sold the film rights to your first novel, Only Daughter. How’s that all going? Great! I’ve just gotten back from LA, where I was catching up with everything that …