Feature: Crisis of Conscience

Engineer Paul Hardisty, a veteran of working in developing nations, has set his first thriller in Yemen. It’s a novel which raises plenty of questions about real-life, he tells Craig Sisterson. 

Paul Hardisty has spent his entire globetrotting career writing down facts - in engineering reports, scientific articles, textbooks - but it wasn't until he imagined a story that he extracted the greatest truths from his experiences. "The irony, of course," says Hardisty, "is that in fiction, you can take a made-up story, strip away the bullshit, and tell the truth."

The story, infused with a deeper truth, is The Abrupt Physics Of Dying, a literary thriller that announced Hardisty as a novelist, and recently earned the director of CSIRO, Australia's national science body, a long-listing for the prestigious John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger in Britain. In his writing, Hardisty strips away the dilution of authenticity, the fraying around the edges of truth that, he says, we all do a little bit of each day. ... CONTINUE READING HERE

This feature was first published in the Saturday 4 July 2015 issue of Canvas magazine, the lifestyle insert for the popular Weekend Herald newspaper in New Zealand.