The story of Anne Hamilton-Byrne’s cult The Family has been told in a non-fiction book and documentary, a novel, In the Clearing, and now a Disney+ series. What can stories like this teach us?
Crime fiction’s place-specific exploration of justice seems ideally suited to Indigenous authors wanting to explore historical and contemporary issues.
Tracey Lien’s debut novel investigates a murder of a model student in a Cabramatta restaurant. Anh Nguyen Austen says it brilliantly conveys the complexities of the Vietnamese refugee experience.
Tilly Devine, State Reformatory, NSW, 1925.
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Heat 2, the literary sequel to Michael Mann’s classic cops-and-robbers film, is weird. Would it stand alone as a novel? Possibly not. But reading it is an incredibly pleasurable experience.
Bao Zheng, a recurring character in Chinese gong'an fiction.
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Many think of crime fiction as a predominantly English and American phenomenon, but the genre is thriving internationally, breaking rules and exploring pressing issues.
A thunderstorm over Galway cathedral.
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Do we read crime novels because we know what is right and wrong, or for guidance through a world that appears ‘all grey’? The books of lawyer-turned-writer Dervla McTiernan prompt such questions.
Spanish authors (from left), Agustin Martinez, Jorge Diaz and Antonio Mercero, who have been writing bestsellers as Carmen Mola.
Quique Garcia/EPA
A true hoax provokes. It questions cultural biases, shattering conventions. But the curious case of the three men writing as a female author Carmen Mola does none of this.
Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train has sold 23 million copies, and the film adaptation was a box office smash.
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There’s something disturbing about a story tracking a character’s mental decline for thrills. Happily, Paula Hawkins’ new novel, A Slow Fire Burning, joins a genre of books bucking this trend.