Past Programs
Books - Crime Fiction - 2008
Malla Nunn's Beautiful Place to Die
01/12/2008
Malla Nunn's novel A Beautiful Place to Die is a detective thriller set in 1950s South Africa. The dead body discovered in the opening pages is that of Captain Willem Pretorius, an Afrikaans Police Captain from the small backwater town of Jacob's Rest.
Detective Emanuel Cooper is sent to investigate, just before the Security Branch show up. This is a time when the colour of a person's skin was the most important thing about them, a time when mixed marriages were illegal and when Malla Nunn's parents were forced to make difficult choices about race.
The Build Up -- crime fiction in the Top End
29/09/2008
Australian author Phillip Gwynne is best known for his young adult fiction, particularly Deadly Unna, a coming-of-age novel set in small-town South Australia about the friendship between a white kid called 'Blacky' and a black kid called 'Red' who play together on the local footy team.
Deadly Unna won the Children's Book Council Book of the Year Award for Older Readers in 1999, and was made into a successful and controversial film, Australian Rules.
But now Phillip Gwynne has branched into adult literature and crime fiction. His latest novel is set in the Top End during the steamy season before the big wet. It's called The Build Up and the main character is Dusty Buchanan.
Barry Maitland in conversation at the Melbourne Writers' Festival Read Transcript
25/08/2008
Barry Maitland is known for his forensic police procedurals featuring the investigative pair of Detective Chief Inspector David Brock and Detective Sergeant Kathy Kolla of Scotland Yard's Serious Crime Unit, but his latest work breaks the mould. The novel, called Bright Air, is set in Australia and, unlike his other work, it's written in the first person, making it a more personal and interior narrative that explores psychological conflicts along with investigating the crime.
James Lee Burke on Jesus Out to Sea Read Transcript
29/07/2008
American writer James Lee Burke is perhaps best known for the series of crime novels featuring his character Detective Dave Robicheaux. But today Ramona Koval speaks with him about his collection of short stories Jesus Out To Sea. Born in Houston Texas in 1936, James Lee Burke grew up on the Texas-Louisiana Gulf coast. He has worked as a rancher, an English lecturer, a labourer on offshore oil rigs, a land surveyor, a social worker in Los Angeles, a clerk for the Louisiana Employment Service, an instructor in the US Job Corps and a newspaper reporter. All of which prepared him mighty well for writing the stories in this collection.
And when Hurricane Katrina devastated the city of New Orleans, that tragic event inspired other stories, stories that seem to have a kind of rage bubbling underneath them.
James Lee Burke joins Ramona Koval from his home in Montana.
Crafting murder: Peter Temple + Michael Robotham Read Transcript
25/07/2008
Last weekend, the inaugural Crime and Justice Festival was being held at the old Abbotsford Convent in Melbourne, bringing together writers, lawyers, social commentators and luminaries from the judiciary to look at writing about justice, human rights and (of course) crime fiction.
Peter Temple won a Ned Kelly award in 1997 for his first novel, Bad Debts. He's subsequently won four more Ned Kelly awards, the most recent of these being for the much acclaimed novel The Broken Shore, which also went on to win the ultimate plaudit for crime fiction, the international Gold Dagger Award now known as the Duncan Lawrie Dagger.
Michael Robotham started his literary life as a ghost-writer, lending his writing skills to politicians, pop stars and all manner of celebrities. His first novel (under his own name) was called Suspect, and it achieved an enormous amount of attention around the world. Since then, his books Lost, The Night Ferry and most recently Shatter, have reinforced his reputation as one of the best architects of the psychological thriller.
Peter and Michael, along with the literary editor of The Age Jason Steger, talk about their unplanned journeys into the crime genre, and the joys and agonies of wrestling a suspenseful story into being.
Another thing that these two writers have in common is that they both started out as journalists. And so Jason Steger started by asking Peter Temple what impact journalism has had on his writing.
Writing about fear: Gabrielle Lord Read Transcript
28/04/2008
Gabrielle Lord says she writes about children being abused by grown-ups—either consciously or unconsciously—because when she was at boarding school she discovered what it's like to be defenceless at the hands of angry adults. It's a lesson she's never forgotten and one that has influenced her writing.
The mystery of Agatha Christie Read Transcript
02/03/2008
The world's best known mystery writer is still, over 30 years after her death, English writer Agatha Christie. As a writer she is outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Today, Ramona Koval speaks with the writer of a new biography of Christie, Laura Thompson, whose book is called Agatha Christie: An English Mystery.
Marketing Lady Chatterley: origins of spin in publishing with Jonathan Rose Read Transcript
12/02/2008
Writers are often thought of as demigods and the words they create are considered sacred, so it's easy to forget that their work is still marketed to the public, that they have to deal with agents, lawyers and designers.
Jonathan Rose is a book historian who's looked at the origins of publishing spin and how the works of Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf and DH Lawrence were originally marketed.
The mystery of Agatha Christie Read Transcript
28/01/2008
The world's best known mystery writer is still, over 30 years after her death, English writer Agatha Christie. As a writer she is outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Today, Ramona Koval speaks with the writer of a new biography of Christie, Laura Thompson, whose book is called Agatha Christie: An English Mystery.
