Thanks for reading and sharing the 9mm series, and Crime Watch in general (and my work elsewhere) over many years. I've had a lot of fun talking to some amazing crime writers and bringing their thoughts and stories to you in this column, along with magazine and newspaper features, event panels, podcasts, and more.
Last weekend I had the pleasure of attending the fantastic Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, one of the best book festivals of any kind in the world. It was really great to catch up with an array of bookloving pals from around the world, and meet some cool new people too. Inspired by being surrounded by the 'crime writing tribe', I recorded several interviews with some cool crime writers, in among dozens/hundreds of general conversations across the four days.
Back to 9mm. You can check out the full list of of past 9mm interviewees here. All 239 of them, and counting. What a line-up! With lots more fun to come. Kia ora rawa atu (thanks heaps), everyone.
Last weekend, live from Harrogate, I shared an interview with brilliant and brave Turkish political journalist and acclaimed crime writer Elçin Poyrazlar.
This week it's another Harrogate interviewee. A leading antipodean author who I've met and hung out with several times before, interviewed for magazines and reviewed several of their books over the years for print and online, but at Harrogate I realised he'd never done the 9mm interview. So we rectified that, with a fun chat amidst the bustle of the beer tent.
Today I'm very pleased to welcome to 9mm one of the stars of the recent global boom in Australian crime writing, the marvellous Chris Hammer. Author of the Martin Scarsden novels, beginning with his brilliant fiction debut Scrublands, then Silver (both recently adapted into hit BBC dramas), along with a terrific series starring Aussie coppers Ivan Lucic & Nell Buchanan (eg Opal Country, Dead Man's Creek, etc), Chris is a huge rising star of global crime fiction.
A former political journalist and foreign correspondent, Chris first appeared at Harrogate in 2019 as part of modern Queen of Crime Val McDermid's famed New Blood Panel, discussing Scrublands. Two years ago he was a featured author, in conversation with SA Cosby before a packed crowd. This year he returned for a panel moderated by Val on the ongoing success of some past New Blood panels, alongside Fiona Cummins, Abir Mukherjee (who won this year's Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award for Hunted), and Stuart Neville. When people talk about Australian crime writing nowadays, his is always one of the very first names that crops up. Deservedly so.
But for now, Chris Hammer becomes the latest author to stare down the barrel of 9mm.
 |
| Chris with Val McDermid, who helped launch his UK popularity in 2019 |
9MM: AN INTERVIEW WITH CHRIS HAMMER
Who is your favourite recurring crime fiction character?
Probably Jackson Lamb. He's multi-layered, and I like the humour side of it. He's bloody unique, right?
What was the very first book you remember reading and really loving, and why?
I reckon it was probably King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. It started off as being very Knights of olde yore and derring-do, you know, going on quests, but then it goes pear-shaped, right? The King is cuckolded by his best mate. All his knights abandon him to go and search for the Holy Grail. Then he's kind of usurped by his past, battles his treacherous son, and is killed. For me, it was a revelation. Up until then. I thought, all stories have a happy ending, yeah? And it showed me how powerful books could be. This is when I'm like, eight or nine, learning the power of a different sort of story.
Before your debut crime novel, what else had you written (if anything) - unpublished manuscripts, short stories, articles?
Yeah, I was a journalist for 30 years, so there was all of that. And I wrote two non-fiction books. They're like narrative non-fiction. So telling the story like travel writing, traveling through Australia, but at the time of a very severe drought. I think that was a stepping stone between journalism and writing fiction, and a lot of the places I went to on those travels, writing those books, then become the settings for some of my crime books, like Scrublands and Dead Man's Creek, and indeed, the next book, Legacy.
Outside of writing and writing-related activities (book events, publicity), what do you really like to do, leisure and activity-wise?
I like travel. I like skiing. I like swimming. I do like reading. There's a lot ... you do a lot of reading that's work related, yeah. So it's really nice when you just break out, like read outside the genre. I read some more literary or contemporary fiction or whatever.
What is one thing that visitors to your hometown should do, that isn't in the tourist brochures, or perhaps they wouldn’t initially consider?
I would say to just go walking in the bush at sunrise or sunset when the animals are out. Yeah, it's quite a unique experience in Canberra, in that it's Australia's capital city but it is very bushy. I live in what's considered the inner city and there's kangaroos 100 meters away, yeah? And beautiful birds.
If your life was a movie, which actor could you see playing you?
Gee, I've no idea ... [after a wee pause] ... maybe Richard Roxburgh? He's got similar colouring.
Of your writings, which is a bit special to you for some particular reason, and why?
So the first one, Scrublands, because it changed my life. But then of the subsequent books, probably the book The Tilt, which is called Dead Man's Creek in the UK. Because it's just structurally much more ambitious, with three points of view, three different timelines, you know. Also writing from the perspective of a teenage girl in the 1970s and an 11 year old boy during the Second World War, and a female detective in present day. So a lot more ambitious, like a big leap, and I was very happy that kind of worked, yeah.
What was your initial reaction, and how did you celebrate, when you were first accepted for publication? Or when you first saw your debut crime novel in book form on a bookseller’s shelf?
The thing I remember with Scrublands, I'd had the two non fiction books published, won awards, sold nothing. Then with Scrublands, I had an agent, and she put it out for auction. The day she rang me up and told me the results of the auction. And there were different bids from different publishers, and as it sort of crept up and got into like six figures, I thought, Oh, wow, maybe I'll only have to work like two days a week.
And then there was a final bid that was just life changing. So I was in this empty office dancing around, laughing and crying because I realized just in that moment that my my life would change, and I could quit my job and be a full-time writer. So that's a very strong memory. I'm sure that the next time I saw my agent, who lives in a different city, we probably had a fair bit to drink.
What is the strangest or most unusual experience you have had at a book signing, author event, or literary festival?
So I went to this festival in the Kimberley, which is, like the far northwest corner of Australia, up in the tropics. And they had no set programme. They just kind of made it up, like oh let's do a session on this. Let's do a question on that. Let's go for a river cruise, and you can do some readings. You want to even swim back? So I start swimming back. Then I found out the river had crocodiles. So that was a pretty wild festival, yeah.
Kia ora, Chris, we appreciate you having a chat with Crime Watch.
 |
| Chris Hammer as the centrepiece of a fun quintet at last month's Capital Crime festival in London, alongside fellow Aussie crime writers Hayley Scrivenor and Kate Kemp, myself, and Turkish journalist and author Elcin Poyrazlar |
Do you enjoy Australian crime fiction? Have you watched the TV adaptations of Scrublands or Silver?
Let us know in the comments
No comments:
Post a Comment