“Where a good crime can be had by all” ISSUE #296 SEPTEMBER 2010 An interview with John Green author of the new crime thriller STIEG-TEMBER! The Girl Who Kicked the NOWHERE MAN Hornets’ Nest (#3) Tp $32.99 Pb $24.95 Why did you give up work as an investment I was worried that Now available in Pb. banker to write a thriller about money, world markets were All 3 titles now murder and markets? going nuts and that available in Pb. They say you should write about what you we might be in a know! But truthfully, when it dawned on me hyped-up bubble. that what got me up in the morning was writing A publisher and not my day job, I quit the job. I’ve always knocked back my The Girl Who Played with Fire (#2) loved stories and hankered to write them, and book because, she said, my fictional crash was Pb $24.95 Film Tie-in edition now available. that’s what I’m now doing. too unbelievable. She was wrong. The financial crisis that ripped global markets apart from mid- What can you tell us about your childhood? September 2008 hit the world just before the I grew up in Kings Cross. Back then, it was book could be published. So again, a real-world a village... a weird village: blue-collar Aussies, crisis forced a major rewrite! The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (#1) migrants, prostitutes, bohemians, eccentrics, I then re-set my story smack inside the DVD $34.95 communists, bikies, strippers and drag queens. actual global financial crisis, weaving my fiction Film (with subtitles) Everybody knew everybody. with the excruciating facts that we all know only now available. Where else could a 7-year-old boy have too well. a prostitute pay him? I was on my way to the Saturday matinee movie when, feeling my Why the title Nowhere Man? pockets, I discovered I’d lost my money. Crying, It reflects how I see the title character, I retraced my steps along Darlinghurst Road Michael Hunt. His shadow casts darkly A NEW KATE ATKINSON! until Shirley called me over from her regular throughout the story. He is everywhere, yet Started Early, doorway. When I explained my catastrophe nowhere. His deserted wife, Sonya, a university Took My Dog between sobs, she handed me enough money professor, is the real hero of the book. An Tp $32.95 for a ticket, a drink and a snack, patted me on intelligent woman who thinks she has a fulfilling A Jackson Brodie mystery. the bottom and sent me back to the movies. life... that is, until it falls apart and she faces the See review - back page. ugly truth. In writing this book, you predicted the It’s got money, murder and passion... and future twice. That’s a bit strange, isn’t it? some very unusual science. Wealthy, but lone, Scary actually! Mostly art imitates life, stock-trader Michael Hunt is a secretive man but for me it was the other way around. I first with a past that he has not even shared with HALF-PRICE HARDBACK! thought I’d finished Nowhere Man in August his wife. But Sonya is forced to start piecing it Elizabeth Peters 2001. I sent it off to an agent just weeks before together when Michael suddenly goes missing, A River in the Sky the September 11 terrorist attacks. The problem leaving her millions in debt, a bank foreclosing Amelia Peabody #19 was that, in my original story, I had fictionally on their Sydney beach house, a love-triangle Hardback $46.95 $23.50 destroyed the World Trade Centre. I’d visited murder and many unanswered questions. When there only a few months earlier and a number the global financial crisis erupts, Sonya’s world of people I knew were killed when the terrorists gets even bleaker, until she stumbles on some struck. Obviously, I had to do a major rewrite. strange files that will change her life forever. ✻ FATHER’S DAY But that wasn’t the only one. They are the key to repaying her debts and Sunday 5 September I left the book for a while, then dreamt up finding Michael, or at least why he left and why So much to choose from what I thought was a wild stock market bust. I he lied. Using these files, Sonya risks everything. for the perfect gift! did that for two reasons... for an exciting, white- Her journey takes her from Sydney to Princeton knuckled ride for my main character – a woman University to ask a famous physicist for help in who is left alone and in huge debt by her unlocking the mystery. But Sonya’s hunt for suddenly missing husband... and frankly because Michael becomes a search for herself. MODERN CRIME Cara BLACK Tony BLACK Murder in the Latin Quarter Loss 288pp Pb $24.95 Christine BARBER 368pp Pb $24.99 Gus Dury #3. Gus Dury is a changed man. He The Replacement Child 288pp Pb $27.00 Aimee Luduc #9. A Haitian woman arrives is off the Edinburgh streets and back with his Editor Lucy Newroe answers the phone at the office of Leduc Detective and estranged wife. He has promised her that he in the Capital Tribune newsroom. The announces that she is Aimee’s sister, her won’t get involved in any more dodgy cases caller is the notorious Scanner Lady – an father’s illegitimate daughter. Aimee is which the police can’t or won’t solve. And he’s anonymous tipster whose hobby is to phone thrilled. A virtual orphan since her mother’s off the drink. But when his brother Michael the newspaper with tips from her police disappearance and her father’s death, she is found dead with a bullet in his heart, Gus’ scanner. But then the Scanner Lady is killed has always wanted a sister. Her partner, Rene, life begins to unravel all over again. How can and Lucy enlists the help of Detective Gil is wary of this stranger, but Aimee embraces he keep the promises he has made and still Montoya, who is focused on the case of a her and soon finds herself involved in murky avenge his brother’s murder? (Scottish) teacher whose body was thrown off the Rio Haitian politics, which leads to murder in Michael BOND Grande Gorge Bridge. As Lucy and Gil hunt Paris’ bohemian Latin Quarter. (American) down two killers, they discover their cases are Monsieur Pamplemousse intertwined. (American) Lisa BLACK Hits the Headlines 213pp Pb $19.99 Evidence of Murder 368pp Pb $14.95 Seated in the front row Beverly BARTON Coping with her of an invited studio Don’t Cry 432pp Pb $14.95 fiancé’s death, audience of France’s When a recent spate of horrific murders Cleveland forensic premier TV cooking is linked to a long-ago series of brutal investigator Theresa show, Monsieur crimes she hoped would never resurface, MacLean probes the Pamplemousse Chattanooga grief counsellor Audrey Sherrod death of Jillian Perry watched in silent – who moonlights for the local police – soon in what police think horror as the host, discovers that the worst is yet to come. may be a suicide, having downed an (American) leaving behind a oyster in close-up, Cynthia BAXTER husband and infant uttered a strangled Crossing the Lion 368pp Pb $14.95 daughter. Theresa cry and sank from Reigning Cats and thinks it was murder, view behind a Dogs #9. Veterinarian as does Jillian’s kitchen worktop. Pommes Frites, sniffer dog and small-town ex-boyfriend, who extraordinaire, has his own views on the pet detective fears the baby girl may be the next victim. matter: Claude Chavignol was a bad egg if Jessica Popper and (American) ever he’d seen one. Subsequent events prove him right, and soon he and his master find husband Nick, while Sean BLACK themselves caught up in a bizarre world of investigating the Lockdown 464pp Pb $21.95 mysterious death of unrequited lust, murder and blackmail in high Ex-soldier turned elite bodyguard Ryan Lock places. (English) business magnate must protect one of America’s most ruthless Linus Merrywood, businessmen. Lock’s mission takes him to a Rhys BOWEN find themselves heavily fortified warehouse on the Hudson Royal Flush 320pp Pb $14.95 trapped on a stormy where he confronts one of the world’s most Royal Spyness #3. Solitude Island dangerous women. As the clock ticks towards London, 1930s. Poor with a killer who midnight on New Year’s Eve, all routes in Lady Georgiana – 34th is determined to protect the biggest family and out of Manhattan are sealed. Not only in line to the throne – secret of all. (American) is Lock’s life in danger, but so are the lives of has been sent home James BECKER millions of others... (Scottish) due to a little scandal. Now she must keep The Messiah Secret 480pp Tp $32.95 Tony BLACK A piece of ancient parchment has been the entirely unsuitable Long Time Dead 256pp Pb $32.95 Mrs Simpson from found in a crumbling English countryside Gus Dury #4. Gus Dury mansion. Written in arcane code is the seducing the Prince is back on the drink, of Wales… and assist answer to a mystery that has explosive when his best friend implications. Determined to solve the Scotland Yard in asks him to investigate preventing someone mystery that has puzzled scholars and the ritual, on-campus thinkers for two millennia, Chris Bronson from shooting the Prince of Wales instead of hanging of an quails! (English) embarks on a journey to one of the most Edinburgh University remote and hostile parts of the world.