Past Programs
Books - Crime Fiction - 2006
A passion for death and gore
01/12/2006
For most of human existence, death, violence and the associated mess and stench, have been unavoidable realities. But something started to change towards the end of the 19th century, and so the 20th century became a period of surprising timidity (in the west at least) surrounding death and gore.
We knew it existed, but we didn't want to be exposed to the details. And we certainly didn't want to talk about it. Our language become politely inadequate, public death became a taboo and apart from the cultural containment of this 'fact-of-life' in horror films and other comic exaggerations, more than a glimpse of the real thing in our peripheral vision was way too much.
So what's been happening in the 21st century? Suddenly we're obsessed with books and TV shows about autopsies and violent murder. We seem to love a good post-mortem with our after-dinner drinks, so much so that the prime-time competition for our TV attention with bits-of-bodies on gurneys is breathtaking and forensic pathologists have, somehow, become more prevalent than quiz-show hosts. So today The Book Show is looking at our new fascination with what could be described as 'full-frontal death'.
To discuss all this, Ramona Koval is joined by three people who know their stuff:
Sydney author Kathryn Fox is a crime writer AND a medical practitioner, with a specialty in forensic medicine. She's a member of the UK Association of Forensic Physicians, and so her two novels, Malicious Intent and Without Consent, both centred around the character of Forensic Physician Dr Anya Crichton, display a clinical knowledge and detail that is both impressive and chilling.
Novelist James Bradley is also based in Sydney, and you may have heard him earlier this year talking about his latest novel The Resurrectionist, a grim and messy 19th century story of the trade in bodies and body parts. And James has displayed a passion, in this and his other novels, Wrack and The Deep Field, for the sort of speculative fiction that asks difficult moral questions and places the reader in unpleasant and confronting spaces.
And finally, from Los Angeles, Naren Shankar, executive producer and co-showrunner of that unavoidable prime-time phenomenon, the CSI (or Crime Scene Investigation) TV series. Along with a host of other highly explicit forensic TV programs from the US and the UK that have come out over the past five to ten years, the CSI series has made the language and science of forensic medicine seem so familiar, so routine, SO effective that these fictional stories are having a real impact in real courtrooms and on real murder and assault cases.
Damian Marrett: White Lies
22/11/2006
Today we glimpse an insider's view of the seedy side of life. It's a story of drug dealers, fake identies and covert operations. Damian Marrett is a former undercover cop who worked for six years with the Victoria Police, playing dozens of specialised roles in which he risked his life for some of the biggest drug busts in Australian law enforcement history.
Damian also worked as a consultant for the TV drama series Stingers, and is the author of the bestselling book Undercover. His new book White Lies takes up where Undercover left off, telling more tales from his days as a covert operative in the Victorian police force, where bending the truth is all part of the job.
Damian Marrett reminisces with Lyn Gallacher about his former glory days.
Qiu Xiaolong, Chinese crime writer
04/10/2006
Chinese writer Qiu Xiaolong uses real cases as the basic plot for his crime novels. But they are unquestionably novels, and today we are going to meet Chief Inspector Chen in Xiaolong's latest book.
'A Chinese Recipe For Murder' was the name given to the session at the Brisbane Writers' Festival where Xialong and I met.
Qiu Xiaolong was born in Shanghai. And has lived in the United States since 1989—in other words, since the Tiananmen Square massacre, which features strongly in his writing; it was because of the massacre that he couldn't return home. As well as detective fiction, Xiaolong publishes poetry, translations and literary criticism. The two books in the Chief Inspector Chen series, which are available in Australia, are Death of a red heroine and A loyal character dancer.
As you'll hear it's a very stylised form of writing, which is interesting, because the style is a Western one in an Asian setting. But this is just one of the many cultural clashes. The summary executions are somewhat chilling and the institutionalised police and political corruption are troubling—but the food is great.
And so that is where we began our conversation.
Qiu Xiaolong reads from his book Death of a red heroine at the Brisbane Writers' Festival. It's a domestic scene, in a typical Chinese household with a typical Chinese couple: Detective Yu (who's Chief Inspector Chen's partner) and his wife. The couple have just finished a crab dinner.
Crime writer Peter Robinson
22/09/2006
A recent visitor to these shores was the very successful English crime-writer Peter Robinson, who despite having based himself in Canada for many years now, still sets his crime series in the UK - crafted around the character of Detective Inspector Banks.
But writing a series of this sort raises all sorts of questions about the development of a set of characters and procedures, the commitment of an audience to him.
Radio National's Kate Evans caught up with Peter Robinson during his time in Australia.
Richard Hawke: Speak Of The Devil
16/05/2006
In the realms of exciting genre fiction, most people would concede that, while the Brits have always had a great line in police and spy stories, America can probably lay claim to the best in gumshoe icons ... those film-noir private eyes with a vernacular that is dark, seductive and irreverent.
Of course, the modern private eye may well have more to contend with than just marital infidelities and the occasional messy murder. In the anxieties that have gripped post-9/11 America, where everyone seems to be spying or being spied upon, the waters are much muddier for private detectives ... the stakes seem to be higher, conspiracy and corruption are more likely to be the objects of investigation, and lines between private eye, FBI and policeman are less clear.
Now enter Fritz Malone, a much updated private detective, with just enough 1940s trench-coat charm to make him sufficiently recognisable and edgy. Fritz is the creation of New York novelist Richard Hawke, whose new novel, Speak Of The Devil, is the first in a series that will unleash this Irish-German gumshoe on New York City.
Before we hear Richard Hawke's conversation with Michael Shirrefs, here he is reading from the start of Speak Of The Devil ...
Richard Hawke: Speak Of The Devil
23/04/2006
In the realms of exciting genre fiction, most people would concede that, while the Brits have always had a great line in police and spy stories, America can probably lay claim to the best in gumshoe icons ... those film-noir private eyes with a vernacular that is dark, seductive and irreverent.
Of course, the modern private eye may well have more to contend with than just marital infidelities and the occasional messy murder. In the anxieties that have gripped post-9/11 America, where everyone seems to be spying or being spied upon, the waters are much muddier for private detectives ... the stakes seem to be higher, conspiracy and corruption are more likely to be the objects of investigation, and lines between private eye, FBI and policeman are less clear.
Now enter Fritz Malone, a much updated private detective, with just enough 1940s trench-coat charm to make him sufficiently recognisable and edgy. Fritz is the creation of New York novelist Richard Hawke, whose new novel, Speak Of The Devil, is the first in a series that will unleash this Irish-German gumshoe on New York City.
Before we hear Richard Hawke's conversation with Michael Shirrefs, here he is reading from the start of Speak Of The Devil ...
