They’ll be writing, crime after crime

A Scotswoman, Australian and New Zealander are not about to walk into a pub together.

Instead, the trio will be travelling the country to tell people the secrets behind crime writing.

Crime writers Val McDermid (Scotland), Michael Robotham (Australia) and J.P. Pomare (Ngāpuhi) are travelling around New Zealand for their book tour dubbed Crime After Crime.

McDermid is a legend in the crime writing scene, especially the Tartan Noir subgenre, selling more than 18 million copies of her books and several television adaptations.

Pomare is relatively fresh to the scene, with his debut novel Call Me Evie winning the Best First Novel award at the Ngaio Marsh Awards in 2019.

His second book In The Clearing is set to have its TV adaptation released on Disney+.

Robothammade his name as a journalist and ghostwriter before taking up crime writing, and his nine-book Joseph O’Louglin series has just been released on television as The Suspect.

He said it was an interesting experience, given the first book in the series, also called The Suspect, was subject to a bidding war at the London Book Fair in 2002.

There had been multiple attempts since to get the TV adaptation over the line, but the wait seemed to be worth it given the positive reviews.

While his writing was fiction, it was often sparked by pieces of reality, he said.

His latest novel, Lying Beside You, used the real concept of ‘‘truth wizards’’ – people who could almost always tell if they were being lied to – to help to create the character Evie Cormac.

But fiction needed to have rules around it as true crime could be so unbelievable at times, he said.

Robotham brought up Josef Fritzl, the Austrian man who held his daughter Elizabeth captive for 24 years so he could rape her, as an example.

‘‘If that was a novel, no one would believe it.’’

Ultimately, crime writing was a way to explore the darker side of the human psyche, he said.

‘‘You can take readers into very dark places.

‘‘I’mamazed at howmuch a reader can stomach, but you cannot leave them there.’’

Giving the reader a sense of justice was crucial, ‘‘otherwise, you just leave them traumatised’’.

He knewMcDermid and Pomare already and was looking forward to touring with them, especially as it was his first major tour in three years due to the Covid-19 pandemic.