if i tell you... i'll have to kill you (extract)

8/22/2019 If I Tell You... I'll Have to Kill You (Extract)

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australias leading rime writers

reveal their serets

edited by mihael robotham

if I TElL you...I'Ll HAVE To

kILL YOU


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First published in 2013

Copyright Michael Robotham 2013

Copyright in individual articles are retained by individual authors

All rights reserved. No part o this book may be reproduced or transmitted in

any orm or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

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whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution or

its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body

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Limited (CAL) under the Act.

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Introduction: Youve Been Warned Michael Robotham 1

Keep the Bodies Coming Shane Maloney 7

The Three Cs Marele Day 19

What Else is There to Do? Peter Corris 33

I Know its Only Noir (But I Like it) Lenny Bartulin 47

Keeping it Real Liz Porter 59

Im Writing a Crime Novel Garry Disher 75

Ned Kelly Diary Malla Nunn 91

Scenes from a Life Kerry Greenwood 105Whats the Worst Thing that can Happen?

Geoffrey McGeachin 121

Writing Gives Me WingsAngela Savage 135

A Stripping Feminist Private Eye Leigh Redhead 151

First Find Some Atmosphere Barry Maitland 167

Beauty and Death Tara Moss 179

Take a Little Time for the Country to Know You

Adrian Hyland 189

Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know Leah Giarratano 205

The Secret Formula Michael Robotham 225

The Art of Suspense Katherine Howell 241Gitmo Here I Come Lindy Cameron 253

A Writing Life Gabrielle Lord 263

contents


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The Facts, Maam, Nothing but the Facts

Lindsay Simpson 285

The Ned Kelly Awards Peter Lawrance 303

Authors Must-Reads 315


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cIntrodution:

YOUVE BEEN WARNED

by Michael Robotham

So you want to know where the bodies are buried.

Dont say you werent warned. When you delve into

the minds o crime writers you are opening up a stinky

stew o psychoses, superstitions, hal-nished stories and

unplanned homicides.

People oten imagine that crime writers would be

good at getting away with murder, but I cant even steal a

kiss. Or to quote Woody Allen, Im the sort o guy who,

i I played baseball, would steal second base, eel guilty

and go back. Thats not to say I dont have murderous

thoughts. I do . . . All the time. I contemplated killing

the author oEat Pray Loveand then I wanted to kill theperson who made it into a movie.

This may seem extreme but Im not alone. In separate

studies, two American psychologists, Douglas Kenrick


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I F I T E L L Y O U . . . I ' L L H A V E T O K I L L Y O U

2

and David Buss, asked people i they had ever antasised

about killing someone. The demographic they chose

had exceptionally low rates o violence, yet between

seventy and ninety per cent o men and between ty

and eighty per cent o women admitted to having at

least one homicidal antasy in the preceding year.

So theres no point in lying. I know youve day-

dreamed about slipping rat poison into the bosss coeeor pushing your mother-in-law under a bus. And dont

get me started on the neighbour who mows his lawn

at 6.30 a.m. every Sunday. Youre dead pal! Just try it

next week!

Despite our day jobs, we crime writers are a colleg-

iate, happy-go-lucky bunch. We put our dark thoughts

on the page rather than bottling them up inside. Youll

appreciate this as you read through these essays, which are

written with enormous generosity, insight and humour.

From the opening pages when Shane Maloney admits to

having killed seventeen people, you will nd bodies at

every turn, as well as suspects, perpetrators and heroes.

This isnt a book about perect crimes. It is about

imperect ones. A perect murder, by its very denition,

is one committed by a complete stranger who has never

met the victim, has no criminal record, steals nothing

and tells no one. For a crime to be truly perect it cannever be detected, which doesnt leave a lot o room or

a writer. We need our murders to be imperect, with

grander or baser motives.


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M I c H A E L R O B O T H A M

Our protagonists are a mixed bunch, ranging rom

whisky-soaked private eyes to ex-strippers, political xers,

wealthy aristocrats, ormer models, trembling psychol-

ogists, paramedics, pathologists, Aboriginal community

police ocers, detective inspectors, bikies and amateur

sleuths. This is testament to the broad scope o crime

writing in Australia, as the gender, jurisdictions and loca-

tions constantly change, but the undamental elementsremain: the crime, the investigation, the resolution and

the ticking o the clock. It may not be tidy, it may

not be nice, it may be bloody miserable, but justice is

normally done.

Whether youre a an o crime ction or true crime,

or a would-be crime writer yoursel, youll nd laughter,

understanding, insight, ideas, advice and hopeully some

inspiration in this collection o essays. I was ascinated

to read how other writers approach their crat. Some

are plotters and some are pantsers (writing by the seat

o their pants). Some are pioneers and some are settlers.

Some write what they know and others go to extra-

ordinary lengths or the sake o their research, including

being strangled to the point o unconsciousness.

Ater reading these essays I knew these writers better

because I learned about the highs and lows, as well as the

nuts and bolts o their working lives. Some stumbled intocrime writing by accident, while others were raised on

the genre being suckled on Chandler, Conan Doyle and

Christie. For most o us it began as a passionate hobby


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and grew into something more. Peter Corris has been

writing virtually every day or over thirty years and

regards it as something akin to breathingstop it

and Id die.

Those o us who read crime ction and true crime

stories appreciate these eorts because we take pleasure

in the details and we love seeing the patterns behind

the details. Fierce mental energy is needed to exposethe lies and resolve the contradictions, to pull o the

alse beards, to interrogate witnesses and interpret

the evidence. We also know that most modern crime

stories are more than just mysteries. They are laden with

insights about people, environments, politics, the law

and much more. One week we can be on the mean

streets o Chicago with Sara Paretsky or in Marthas

Vineyard with Philip Craig or in Venice with Donna

Leon and Sweden with Henning Mankell.

Crime stories allow us to escape romour daily lives

and provide us with the reassurance that we can cope

withour daily lives. They show us the best and worst o

human nature and allow us to question how we would

react in similar circumstances. Author Sue Graton

summed it up when she said: A crime story is more

than a novel, more than a compelling account o people

whose ate engages us. The mystery is a means by whichwe can explore, vicariously, the perplexing questions o

crime, guilt and innocence, violence and justice.

So consider yoursel warned beore you begin digging


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M I c H A E L R O B O T H A M

up the bodies. Our secrets are now yours. And remember

what Stephen King said when asked why he wrote about

such gruesome subjects. Why do you assume that I have

a choice?

Michael Robotham

All royalties rom this book go towards the Australian

Crime Writers Association, which runs the annualNed Kelly Awards and was established to promote crime

writing and reading in Australia. I youd like to learn more

about the ACWA and see the benefts o membership

go to our website: www.auscrimewriters.com
http://www.auscrimewriters.com/http://www.auscrimewriters.com/


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cKEEP THE BODIES

cOMING

by Shane Maloney

So ar Ive killed around seventeen people. Its hardto be completely sure without digging them up and

counting them all, but Ive been at it or a while now

and it has to be somewhere in the high teens, minimum.

Among others, Ive dispatched a leading-hand storeman,

a promising young athlete, a talented painter, a shity

property developer, an abalone poacher, the owner oa trattoria in Moonee Ponds, a senior union ocial, a

rerigeration mechanic, a public policy analyst, a gym

jockey and both sons o a trucking magnate. Ive rozen,

drowned, bludgeoned, shot, speared, squashed, run

down and incinerated them. And I still havent nished.

Lead a lie like mine and youre under constant pressureto keep the bodies coming.

Some o those who died were innocent victims.

Some were only getting what they deserved. Mostly


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I kill men. The one time I killed a woman, it cost me a lot

o grie. I dressed it up to make it look like an accident,

but it was entirely deliberateher loss was indispensable

to the advancement o the story, so she had to die.

Perhaps at this point I should say that I am not an

inherently violent person. My childhood was not spent

torturing caterpillars. My mother was not killed in

a bizarre sex slaying on a vacant lot in Pasadena. Myinner demons keep mainly to themselves. I would never

dream o stabbing someone over and over again in the

eye with a shard o broken glass then kicking him until

his spleen came out o his ears, no matter how much he

might happen to deserve it. I didnt deliberately set out

to become a serial killer. My homicidal rampage began

entirely innocently, but it is a well-known act that these

things have a tendency to get out o hand. One thing

leads to another and God knows where it will all end.

Death has a lie o its own.

It all began when I decided to write a novel. At the

time, I didnt know much about the literature game, so

I thought Id start somewhere on the ringe and work

my way towards the centre, picking things up as I went

along. Eventually, I elt Id gured out enough to write

the Great Australian Novel and win the Peter Carey

Prize or Best New Tim Winton. Crime ction seemeda good place to start. It is a second-rate literary orm, a

hot bed o low expectations, so its appeal was obvious.

For a brie moment I considered trying my hand at


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S H A N E M A L O N E Y

antasybut theres only so low a man can be expected

to stoop.

Precisely because it makes no great literary claims

or itsel, crime ction takes a lot o perormance

pressure o the would-be novelist. Free rom the need

to produce lapidary sentences and proound rumina-

tions, the writer can get on with the job o taking the

reader or a ride. But contemporary crime takes in a loto territory and I wasnt quite sure where to begin. So

I started in the usual placeby killing somebody.

My victim was a Turkish oreman in a meat-packing

works in Broadmeadows. I locked him in a reezer

until he expired, then stued his snap-rozen carcass

between the pallets o spring lamb. His job was simply

to get the ball rolling, to precipitate the ensuing action.

He had a name but little in the way o a lie history.

That would come later, uncovered in the course o the

story. All that mattered or the moment was the act

that he had met an untimely death and there was clearly

more to the situation than met the eye o the relevant

authorities.

I got the idea rom my own experience. Once as a

teenager, when I was working a school-holiday job, my

workmates locked me in a reezer until I turned blue and

began to shake uncontrollably. It was all jolly good un,a bit o a lark, but it sort o stuck in my mind.

With a corpse suitably urnished and puzzle success-

ully posited, it was time or the protagonist to arrive.


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In accordance with the inexorable logic o crime ction,

a suspicious death summons orth the sleuth. In most

crime ction, the killer-catcher is acting in a proessional

capacity. They are a representative o those institu-

tions o society charged with the task o investigating

crimesa police ocer, a coroner, a orensic pathologist

or whatever. Their mission is sanctioned and supported

by the apparatus and resources o the state. The investi-gator acts on behal o the rest o us to seek the truth and

ensure that justice is enacted.

Alternatively, the sleuth might be a private detective,

a hired specialist, a gumshoe. He might be a twenty-

dollar-a-day proessional, a Philip Marlowe hanging his

shingle or the passing trade. Operating on the ringes

o the law, the gumshoe doesnt so much solve crimes as

turn over rocks, setting in motion a train o events which

might, or might not, reveal the truth. This process is

acilitated by asking unwelcome questions and being

struck over the head rom behind, knocked unconscious

and waking up in a puddle o piss.

The protagonist might also be an inspired amateur,

a Miss Marple who treats murder as an intellectual puzzle,

a mystery to be solved, a brainteaser. Such a character

proves her mental and moral mettle by penetrating the

signicance o the act that the pistol shot was concealedby the striking o the dinner gong by the butler, whose

ootprints outside the conservatory window can only be

explained by young Reggie Fernacker-Clakkes sudden


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interest in Eunice Crabapples collection o rare Lepi-

doptera.

Take your pick: orensic procedural, gumshoe, cosy,

gangsterin crime ction par excellence, one writers

meat is another writers ast-acting, almost-undetectable

poison derived rom a rare plant ound only in a lost

valley in the Hindu Kush. Whatever shape they might

happen to take, detectives are usually driven by easilydeciphered intentions. In police procedurals, the invest-

igators are government unctionaries, with all the

organisational complications that entails. Murder is

antisocial and its victims have rights, including ull

access to the latest in electron microscopy and DNA

matching. Detection is a team eort and the individ-

ual investigators are there to provide the psychological

dimensions and the personal quirks.

Over the course o crime ctions 150-odd-year

history, the protagonist has evolved and multiplied

into myriad orms. The shambolic homicide dick with

whisky on his breath and soup stains on his tie has

transmogried into the emale orensic pathologist in a

Chanel suit. Sherlock Holmes has become a traditionally

sized Arican lady rom Botswana and the hard-boiled

Philip Marlowe is now a eisty goil rom Noo Joisey or

a hal-Danish, hal-Inuit Marxist glaciologist. The jobdescriptions, jurisdictions, gender and methodologies are

continuously changing, but the undamental structure

persistsdiscover the crime, untangle the acts, winnow


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the suspects, plumb the motives, test the alibis, appre-

hend the perpetrator, avenge the wrong and beat the

clock. Whether amateur or proessional, the habitual

crime-solver is inured, i not hardened, by amiliarity

with the grisly details. Inspector Rex, or example, takes

homicide in his stride. Ritual disembowelment one

minute, a ham roll the next.

It all seems pretty straightorward, but at my rstoray into the genre, I began by making a serious category

error. It was a mistake which has dogged me ever since.

Instead o employing a member o the killer-catching

community as my protagonist, I gave the job to a rank

novice called Murray Whelan, a minder, political xer,

hopeless romantic and inadvertent detective.

Wondering what an ordinary bloke might do i he

began to suspect that a murder had gone undetected,

that a death which had been quickly dismissed as an

industrial accident was actually the result o oul play,

and that somebody was getting away with it, I came

up with a sel-starter protagonistan everyman equipped

with no brie to investigate, no orensic expertise and

no real evidence. And by way o motivation, I gave

him not a coppers world-weary determination or a

gumshoes tarnished code o honour, but a mish-mash

o nosiness, scepticism, loyalty, sense o justice and,when the baddie eventually comes at him with a sharp-

ened screwdriver, pants-shitting terror.

Despite these undamental design faws, my accidental


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hero stumbled onward, uncovering clues and upsetting

the urniture. By the end o the book, the body count

was a modest two. The victims, to a greater or lesser

extent, deserved what they got. No innocents were

harmed. No evil greater than greed was unmasked.

Murray Whelan, having come ace to ace with murder,

was physically shaken but not existentially stirred.

Actually, it all worked out rather well. By that, I meanthe book got published.

But a taste or murder, once acquired, is not easily

shaken o. Hercules Poirot didnt stop at just one victim,

nor Philip Marlowe, nor Cli Hardy or John Rebus.

No sooner had my bloke settled back into a semblance

o normal lie than another body popped up. Thats the

other thing about crime ction. Once word gets around

that youve got blood on your hands, youre expected

to live up to your reputation. I was now duty bound to

start ong people at regular intervals. I must become

a serial killer.

Things soon began to get seriously out o hand. The

death rate took a steep upward turn. From two bodies

in my rst book, I went to ve in the second. I took a

young painter with a complicated past, got him drunk

and drowned him in the ornamental moat o an art

gallery. I then pushed a harmless old queen down a steepriverbank. And soon ater I got a gun. Its not hard to do.

There are a lot more o them around than most people

realise. And once I had a gun, people started to get shot.


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For a while there, it looked like my bumbler would be

lucky to escape with his lie. Eventually, o course, the

villain got his comeuppance, but only ater a long trail

o corpses had been delivered to the morgue.

By novel number three, I was acing a new pressure.

Pace wasnt matching productivity. I wasnt killing ast

enough. My American publisher complained that it took

almost 100 pages to get to the rst atality. Why the longlead-up? In Red Harvest, Dashiell Hammett had killed

28 people by Chapter 5. Id barely managed threeor

was it our? Id been concentrating on neither numbers

nor speed but method. I started with bare hands and

worked my way up to a javelin.

By the end o book our, the bodies were really

starting to pile up. I ran over the rst victim with

a semi-trailer during a torrential pre-dawn rainstorm.

I did this in order to eliminate crime-scene orensics as

a plot element and leave the coppers bafed. Forensics

are a bitch and the more bafed the gendarmes, the more

room or manoeuvre. I then shot a truckie on the side

o a country road and let a ake suicide note beside his

body. This was a direct consequence o the protagonist

sticking his big bib in the wrong place and exacerbating

an already hairy situation. This urther compounded my

hapless heros expanding repertoire o motives. As wellas a natural tendency to want to right wrongs, he must

also clear his name and get revenge on the bastards who

oed his truckie mate.


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In general we humans like to think that the motives

or murder are airly straightorward. Psychopaths do it

because theyre batshit crazy. Sociopaths do it because

they dont give a shit. Other motives are equally easy to

understand. They are derived rom our most common

human emotionsear, pride, envy, anger, greed, lust

and all the other deadly sins except sloth (ew people are

ever killed in a renzy o unbridled sloth). Personally,Im somewhat inclined to the view that as a motivat-

ing actor, motive is overrated. In a lot o premeditated

murders, it seems to me, there is very little meditation,

pre or post. At one point, I killed a amily riend in

a blind rage uelled by anabolic steroids. Not only was

there no real motive behind it, there was no subsequent

memory. I got the idea rom a real case. This idea o a

motive being unnecessary doesnt just apply to murder.

As Mailer or Roth or Hemingway or one o those guys

once amously said, the motive or writing a novel is to

write a novel.

In the contemporary crime novel an element o

unresolved sexual tension is more or less obligatory. The

protagonist must not only collar the killer, he must also

nail the girl . . . or boy . . . or cat. Its a multi-gendered

world out there, olks, and the electricity must be taken

into account. And when you murder the love interest, youreally ramp up the stakes. Which brings me back to the

woman I mentioned earlier, the one whose convenient

demise caused me grie. She was an innocent victim,


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collateral damage in a shootout between police and two

prison escapees. She was one o my better creations, at

least as ar as my hero was concerned. He loved her.

Which is precisely why I killed her.

In that particular book, the bullets are whistling by

page three. I saw o a mans ear and eed it to a dog.

Theres a ght to the death in a dinghy. The cops arrive

in a blaze o gunre. Its all very cathartic. Every newbook demands resh blood, but suitable victims are not

always easy to nd. In the case o my most recent novel

(I use the word recent in the ironic sense), the suspi-

cious death is decades old. The detection is hal-arsed.

The sexual tension is peripheral to the case. The only

potentially violent character is overcome in a furry o

activity a ew pages rom the end. The issue at stake

is a dead mans posthumous reputation. It wasnt really

a murder anyway.

Still, they called it crime ction, so thats what it

must be. Which tends to take the pressure o a bit, Im

pleased to say. Murder can be exhausting and its nice to

ease back rom time to time. But then, inevitably, you

begin to eel a certain hankering.

Now where did I leave that axe?


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MY RULES

There are no fucking rules There are only fucking examples Read

some fucking books Broaden your vocabulary Fuck can function

as most parts of speech, but that doesnt mean you should limit

yourself Have a concept Do your research Dont procrastinate Find

inspiration Believe in yourself Steal Use spellcheck Think about all

the possibilities Persist Get a proper thesaurus If it doesnt work,

start again Learn from your mistakes Get over yourself Start asclose to the end as possible Make me care

FIVE MUST-READS

1. The Big Sleepby Raymond Chandler

2. Miami Bluesby Charles Willeford

3. The Friends of Eddie Coyleby George V Higgins

4. Skintightby Carl Hiaasen

5. Miss Smillas Feeling for Snowby Peter Heg

kShane Maloney is the creator o the bestselling Australian

crime series, the Murray Whelan novels: Sti, The Brush-

O, Nice Try, The Big Ask, Something Fishy and

Sucked In. He is a winner o the Ned Kelly Award or

Best Crime Fiction and recipient o the Australian CrimeWriters Association Lietime Achievement Award.

if i tell you... i'll have to kill you (extract)

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