Sunday, December 11, 2011

Through Scarpetta's Eyes: my interview with Patricia Cornwell

Recently, I had the privilege of interviewing Patricia Cornwell, who in a way sparked the whole forensic fiction sub-genre (which has since influenced many writers in books, film, and television) with her 1990 debut, POSTMORTEM, which introduced Kay Scarpetta and won a host of awards.

From the CSI franchise to Body of Proof, Bones, and dozens more TV shows that fill the nightly line-ups, it's easy to see that once Cornwell let the forensic/pathology/scientific side of crime fiction out of the box, it's something that has really taken hold for creators, readers, and viewers worldwide.

I had a very enjoyable half an hour chatting with Cornwell about a variety of topics, by phone, while she was touring the United Kingdom in support of her latest Kay Scarpetta novel, RED MIST.

Today, a feature article I wrote based on the interview was published in the Sunday Star-Times, New Zealand's most widely-read Sunday newspaper. If you are in New Zealand, you can read the article on page F8 of the Culture magazine in the newspaper. Go and grab a copy - there's plenty of other interesting stories in today's issue as well.

5 comments:

  1. Craig - Sounds like it was a good interview. Thanks for sharing about it.

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  2. Hopefully I will be able to publish it in full online next week, if the SST doesn't place it on the popular Stuff.co.nz website itself.

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  3. Enjoyed the article, Craig. You get to chat to all sorts of interesting people nowadays!

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  4. I always thought that Thomas Harris sparked that particular subgenre ;-)

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  5. From memory, although the Harris novels have 'crazy/intelligent serial killers' (eg Lecter), they're not really forensic, in terms of autopsy/pathology etc - and Corwnell is clearly the one who kickstarted that in a big way, and has been followed by many authors (Reichs etc) and TV shows. She took crime novels into the labs/autopsy rooms etc in a big way, and now even general crime shows/books often include that, either as a focus or as a bigger part of the overal team/story etc...

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