Paddy Richardson on Good Morning TV show

Paddy Richardson has become a stalwart of the contemporary crime fiction scene in New Zealand, penning some truly terrific psychological thrillers. After writing more general fiction, she dove into crime with A YEAR TO LEARN A WOMAN, before really hitting her straps with HUNTING BLIND, which was a finalist for the Ngaio Marsh Award.

Continuing the crime trend, Richardson published TRACES OF RED, then CROSS FINGERS, a terrific psychological thriller that delves into New Zealand's murky history in relation to the 1981 Springbok Tour. This latter book is in the running for the 2014 Ngaio Marsh Award.

Now, Richardson has released a different tale, SWIMMING IN THE DARK, "a powerful novel" which focuses on the lives of three woman, while dipping into the dark history of Stasi Germany. With Richardson having attended the Frankfurt and Leipzig Book Fairs in 2012, it is interesting to note the German links or themes in this latest work.

Richardson was interviewed today on Good Morning, a popular show on  the TV ONE channel of New Zealand's main broadcaster, TVNZ. You can watch her five-minute interview here, although this will only be available 'on demand' for another 20 days, and may not be available to all international readers.

As such, I've cherry-picked a few quotes from the interview to share here, for posterity purposes:

• Richardson: "I started as a so-called literary writer, and then wrote a novel that I was told was a crime novel, without actually intending to write a crime novel, and I wrote four crime novels, but this started with the idea of having a crime but developed into something quite different..."

• Richardson: "I just loved Leipzig, I fell in love with it. It was just the most beautiful city, the old buildings, the cobblestones, you know the kind of fairy tale look. But at the same time, juxtaposed against that was the sense of Soviet occupation, with the big apartment buildings and yeah, just that sense of restriction. I went to the Stasi Museum... and I just knew I had to write a novel, something set in Leipzig, and also something about the Stasi."

• Richardson: "I like to write in an organic way, but this novel took me over, and the characters demanded their own voices. That's never happened to me before, this was crazy."

Early reviews have been very complimentary of the novel. If you've had a read yourself, please feel free to share your comments and thoughts (no spoilers please).