I first discovered FNQ – Far North Queensland – in 1994 when I came to do a locum in Cairns Hospital. The town had more of a frontier atmosphere then. The bitumen of the Bruce highway ran out not far along the only road to Cooktown, and the dirt road up to Cape York was impassable in the Wet season. As part of the locum job, I did clinics in the Aboriginal communities of Aurukun and Pormpuraaw, flying in a tiny Cessna with one pilot and one nurse. Leaving Cairns airport, we flew over thick virgin rainforest in a wide strip along the Coral Sea coast; tree ferns flourished beneath a canopy of oa ..read more

I’ve loved the novel, Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier since I first read it as a teenager. I fell in love with the beautiful writing and the dark gothic story. But what I didn’t know, until I came across an article about du Maurier a few years ago, was that du Maurier was accused of plagiarism after Rebecca came out — and by not one, but two different authors. One of those two claims even went to trial in New York in the 1940s (The other author never brought a formal claim.) Du Maurier was ultimately cleared in the trial. I came across this article just after I’d finished writing my last novel ..read more

I’ve been writing seriously for about ten years now and almost every one of my plays, and now novels, has begun with something I’ve read in a newspaper or heard on ABC Radio National. In 2015 I came across an article in The Guardian’s ‘Experience’ column written by an interpreter in the criminal justice system and I was immediately intrigued and knew I was going to write about this fascinating and high-stakes profession. I’d never given any thought to the work of interpreters before. It had not occurred to me that they translate in the first person, ‘I’, and for interpreters in the justice sys ..read more

Nicole Morris, the Director of Australian Missing Persons Register, is the author of Vanished True stories from families of Australian missing persons. Here she explores how she got there. I love old second-hand bookshops. You know that smell? Old paper and dark corners, ink, and wooden shelves. There was one in the little seaside town I grew up in. Before we moved there, we went there on every holiday, and on the first day my sister and I would wait impatiently for our parents to drive us to the bookshop. We had a list of what we wanted to find. At the top of my list was as many Trixie Belden ..read more

They lie, the men who tell us for reasons of their own, that want is here a stranger and misery’s unknown. (Henry Lawson from the poem, “Faces in the Street”) Henry Lawson is considered one of Australia’s greatest poets and wrote at a time in Australian history when struggle, pain, and triumph went hand in hand with corruption, ignorance, and injustice. As a crime writer, I ask myself if the past can really be left behind and has anything essentially changed? To me, the Great Dividing Range is not merely a geographical feature, it is a legacy we have inherited; it is the divide in society betw ..read more

For the May edition of A Stab in the Dark, multi-award-winning Sydney author Diane Armstrong talked to our new contributor, Natalie Conyer, about Dancing with the Enemy (HQ Fiction, 2022), a thrilling novel set during the Nazi occupation of the island of Jersey during World War II, and which explores the moral choices people make in extreme crisis.  You’ve written seven books now, two non-fiction and five fiction. All of them deal in some way with the Second World War, particularly with the Jewish experience. Why are you so interested in this period of history?  Being a child Holocau ..read more

I’ve been thinking lately about the difference between a mystery book and a crime book. It’s no secret that Australian crime fiction is having a moment right now. But what about other suspense genres such as mystery and thriller? I’ve always written stories imbued with a central mystery and often this involves a crime, but I wouldn’t really call myself a crime writer, nor my books crime fiction. But last year my third book, The Beautiful Words, was shortlisted for the 2022 Davitt Awards for women writing crime. I was also asked on a writers’ festival panel what attracted me to writing in the c ..read more

1. No police contacts. 2. No way to keep up with the ever-changing world of forensics. 3. Most knowledge of law comes from TV. Three excellent reasons to steer clear of crime writing. I doubt I’m the only one who’s felt this way. Taking on the crime genre is intimidating. Not only do you get tangled in details, but how do you lay out the clues, red herrings, and plot twists to make a satisfying story? For a long time, I enjoyed the talent of other writers rather than try it for myself. And when I did try it, I started plotting a whodunnit but lost interest halfway through. I’m not a plotter by ..read more

When my writing started getting published, in literary journals and short story collections – people began asking me about process. I didn’t have a lot to say about it: I wrote when I wasn’t teaching. I wrote when I could and when I had a good idea. Isn’t that what everyone does? Then, after my first crime novel was published, I received my first serious publishing contract which stipulated one book a year, for the next two years. Writing when I could, and when I had a good idea became a luxury. I had to plan my year. This is tricky, as I don’t plan my books in advance, in other words, I’m a ..read more

If you’re a writer . . . scratch that . . .  if you’re any kind of creative person sitting at your desk in your metaphorical attic, then your days are tinted by whatever colour you give to failure. As Richard Flanagan says what a writer needs above all “is a mad courage to overcome the fear of failure we all have”. And he’s captured the world’s heart and won the Booker Prize so how much greater is this challenge for the most of us? But the cold truth is that it’s not just a fear, it’s a reality. We all do fail over and over and over. The path to success is paved with failure. I used to wo ..read more