Podcast Transcript
Michael Robotham “When You Are Mine”
SPEAKERS
Nicole Abadee, Michael Robotham
Nicole Abadee 00:05
Hello, I'm Nicole Abadee and I write about books for good weekend. Welcome to the Books, Books, Books podcast in which I interview the best writers from Australia and overseas about their latest book. Thank you for joining me. Before we begin, I would like to acknowledge the country where I live and work and from where I'm joining this conversation, the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation. I pay my respects to their elders past and present to the elders of all communities and cultures across Australia, and to leaders of the future. You can listen to this podcast all of the episodes at nicoleabadee.com.au or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Today I'm delighted to welcome best selling Australian crime writer Michael Robotham, to Books, Books, Books to discuss his latest thriller and 18th book "When You Are Mine," published here in June by Hatchette. It's also out in the UK and in New Zealand and it has been in the two weeks since its release at the end of June. It's been the number one fiction bestseller. So huge congratulations for that, Michael.
Michael Robotham 01:12
Thank you, Nicole.
Nicole Abadee 01:14
Now let me just tell you a little bit about Michael and his phenomenal career. He's sold more than 6 million copies of his novels across 50 countries since the publication of his first novel "The Suspect" in 2004. And it was the first in the Joe O’Loughlin series. He has since written many other best selling books, including "Good Girl, Bad Girl" and "When She Was Good," the first two novels in the Cyrus Haven series. Before he became a writer, Michael spent 14 years as an investigative journalist working in Australia, the UK and the USA. In 1993 he quit journalism to become a Ghostwriter for politicians, pop stars and TV personalities and he did that for about 10 years. Michael has won many awards, I won't mention all of them but I will mention that he is the only Australian writer to have won the UK's prestigious CWA Gold Digger award for the years best crime novel in English twice. Not many people have done that John Lecarre is another and no other Australians have done that. Michael won that award in 2015 for "Life or Death" and in 2020 "Good Girl, Bad Girl." His novel "The Secrets She Keeps" was recently made into a six part BBC TV series, and there's a second series currently in production. And "When She Was Good" has just won the 2021 CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, for best thriller. Crime writer extraordinaire, Stephen King, has said this about Michael "I always have a huge stack of books to read. But a Michael Robotham novel automatically goes to the top of the pile." Michael, welcome to Books, Books, Books.
Michael Robotham 02:54
Thank you very much, Nicole.
Nicole Abadee 02:56
Could you start by telling us what your latest book "When You Are Mine" is about.
Michael Robotham 03:00
It's narrated by a young police woman, a very ambitious young policewoman called Philomena McCarthy. Who has defied the odds to become a policewoman in the London Metropolitan Police because she comes from a notorious crime family. Her father and her uncles are notorious gangsters and she's sort of been etranged from them for a decade and fought her way onto the police force. But she does have that baggage to carry with her. And the story is basically about on one of her normal shifts, she rescues a young woman from a domestic abuse situation, only to discover that the perpetrator is a decorated London detective. And obviously, Philomena, I mean, that's one of the things that police do not do, they do not investigate their own. And Philomena makes a powerful enemy when she arress this man for beating up his mistress. And it begins to spiral her life out of control. And she develops an unlikely friendship with the woman she rescues Tempe Brown and it's a friendship where they seem to bond like sisters but there's something not quite right about Tempe. There's something not quite right about the story she tells and the situation she gets herself into. And and Philomena does not realize that until too late.
Nicole Abadee 04:16
Michael, could you read a short extract from the book please?
Michael Robotham 04:20
This introduces it, the first two pages of "When You Are M"ine, and it introduces Philomena McCarthy. I was 11 years old when I saw my future. I was standing in the middle door to the double decker bus when a bomb exploded on the upper level, peeling off the roof like a giant and taking a tin opener to a can of peaches. One moment I was holding on to a strap and the next I was flying through the air, some sky, then ground and sky. A leg went past me, a stroller a million shards of glass each catching the sunlight. I crash to the pavement as debris and body parts fell around me looking out through the dust. I wondered what I I've been doing on a London sightseeing bus, which is what it looked like without a roof. People were hurt, dying, dead. I spat grit from between my teeth and tried to remember where I'd been standing, next to a tattooed girl with white earbuds and a hack purple hair. A mother with a toddler and a stroller. Two old ladies were in a side seat arguing about the price of cinema tickets. A guy with a hipster beard was carrying a guitar case decorated with stickers from around the world. Normally, I would have been at school at 9:47 in the morning, but I had a doctor's appointment with an ear nose and throat specialist who's going to tell me why I suffered so many sinus infections. Apparently I have narrow nasal passages, which is probably genetic, but I hadn't worked out who to blame. As I lay on the street a man's face appeared hovering over me. He was talking but he made no sound. I read his lips. "Are you bleeding?" I looked at my school uniform. My blue and white check blouse was covered in blood. I didn't know it was mine. "How many fingers am I holding up?" Three. He moved away. Around me shopfront windows had been shattered covering the pavement and roadway with diamonds of glass. A pigeon lay nearby blown out of the sky or maybe it died of fright. Dust had settled coating everything in a fine layer of gray soot. Later when I saw myself in the mirror, I had white streaks under my eyes, the tracks of my tears. As I lay in the gutter I watched a young policewiman moving among the injured, reassuring them, comforting them. She put her arms around a child who had lost his mother. The same officer reached me and smiled, she had a round face and brilliantly white teeth and her hair was bundled up under her cap. My ears had stopped ringing words fell out of her mouth. "What's your name poppet?" Philomena, "What's your last name?" McCarthy. "You're by yourself, Philomena?" I have a doctor's appointment, I'm going to be late. "He won't mind." The police officer gave me a bottle of water so I can wash the dirt from my mouth. I'll be back soon. She said as she continued moving among the wounded. She was like one of those characters you see in disaster movies that you know is going to be the hero from the moment they appear on screen. Everything about it was calm and self assured sending a message that we would survive this, the city would survive. All was not lost.
Nicole Abadee 07:29
Michael, thank you for that. Before we start to talk about "When You Are Mine" I want to ask you a few general questions about your writing life. There's a lovely story about when you first decided that you wanted to be a writer at the age of about 12. And it had something to do with an American writer called Ray Bradbury. Could you share that story with us please?
Michael Robotham 07:50
Now, I mean, I discovered the wonderful writings of Ray Bradbury when I was about 11 or 12. And I mean, his most famous novel is Fahrenheit 451. But he was you know, I discovered his short stories which were science fiction and horror and and I absolutely adore them. And there were about three Ray Bradbury titles you couldn't get in Australia and so I I decided to write a letter to him and I I just addressed it to Ray Bradbury, Random House, New York because I'd looked on the inside cover of the book. And I don't recall putting stamp on the envelope and I just popped it in the mailbox. And about three months passed and I came home from primary school. And there was a package on the kitchen table and inside were the three titles, the three books that weren't available in Australia, along with a letter from Ray Bradbury, who had written to say how thrilled he was to have a young young reader on the far side of the world. And I mean, that was an enormously generous gesture. And I like to credit Ray Bradbury was the reason I wanted to become a writer but the story sort of got even better because years and years later, probably about now seven or eight years ago. I wrote that story up in an American magazine and it was reprinted on my publishers website. And I I once I quoted Bradley, he once said that "Jules Verne was his literary father and Mary Shelley was his literary mother and and Edgar Allan Poe was the bat wing cousin they kept locked in the attic." And I said that Ray Bradbury was my literary father, and that Steinbeck and Hemingway were my overachieving older brothers. And, and this story appeared just as I've told you, and and about a week later, I got an email from Alexandra Bradbury, Ray Bradbury's youngest daughter. I had no idea that Ray was still alive. I thought he would have long since passed away and, and Alexandra sent me an email saying My dad is 91 years old. And he is now completely blind. But I read him athe story that you wrote and I wanted you to know that you made an old man cry and he wanted you to know that you are his son.
Nicole Abadee 10:05
Beautiful story.
Michael Robotham 10:06
It was stunning and and I think there was a little lovely moment PostScript to that. I was you know I was just I was due to go and see him. When I next got to America on a tour the plan was that I would go and see him, he died. About a few weeks before I arrived. He passed away. But there was an incredible outpouring of stories from people like Neil Gaiman and Joanna Harris, who wrote "Chocolat" and Steven Spielberg and all of them told stories similar to what I've just told you about how Ray Bradbury inspired them. And President Obama announced in the White House because one of Bradbury's most famous series of short stories was called "The Martian Chronicles" and the Martian Rover had just landed on Mars when Ray died, and Obama announced from the White House that the landing spot would forever be known as Bradbury's landing, which I thought was such a wonderful testimony.
Nicole Abadee 11:02
What a beautiful story. Thank you for sharing that. Before you were a writer for some years, 14 I think, you were an investigative journalist. And you worked quite a lot together with clinical and forensic psychologists to tr y to solve with them or to be involved with them in solving complex crimes. Would you like to tell us a little bit about that work that you did?
Michael Robotham 11:24
Yeah, it was really it sort of came after journalism really. Rather than as a journalist. As a ghostwriter, you may well get on to talking about my ghost writing. One of the people that I did two books with was a man called Paul Britton. And Paul Brittain is the is the pioneer of offender profiling in the UK of psychological profiling. And he's actually the, here's the real life figure that cracker was based upon. I'm sure many people listening will remember that amazing BBC series starring Robbie Coltrane playing the forensic psychologist, "Fitz." And Jimmy McGovern, the wonderful TV writer wrote that series based on the work of Paul Brittain. And, and Paul worked on cases like the Jamie Bolger case and pregnant Rosemary West and some of the most celebrated crimes and he helped solve. And I get I got to watch Paul at work very, very close him because I said, I wrote, first of all, his first autobiography, "The Jigsaw Man" was about his, his work with the place and he'd worked on over 100 murders. And many of my novels. You know, my I have a psychologist as my main character and many of those novels draw upon the information and the knowledge I got from working with Paul. And the second book "Picking Up the Pieces" was about his clinical work because his knowledge comes from having spent over 25 years working with the, in places like Broadmore and Rampton in these secure psychiatric hospitals, working with seriously disturbed people who had either committed terrible crimes, or fantasised about committing terrible crimes. Yeah, that's how he had this knowledge when he could walk into a crime scene and tell the police exactly the sort of mind that was behind it.
Nicole Abadee 13:15
And I can imagine from that, from working so closely with him and from ghostwriting his books that you must have learned so much. How else have you drawn on that ghostwriting experience? In terms of your fiction writing, your writing of these thrillers?
Michael Robotham 13:31
I mean, the art of being a ghostwriter is about it's all about capturing voice. It's because I did 15 autobiographies for people, and they and five of those were women, including people like Geri Halliwell and Lulu, the 60s pop star and Margaret Humphreys, the Nottingham social worker who had the book turned into a film called 'horizon Sunshine' about six or seven years ago. She uncovered the child migrant scandal that saw all those children sent abroad from children's homes in the UK to places like Australia and South Africa and Canada. And each time you're ghostwriting, one of those projects, it's about, if I do my job properly, I capture their voice so perfectly that someone that has known them their entire lives, will not recognise my fingerprints on that. But this will look and sound and feel exactly like the person that I'm writing that book for. And I guess you know, one of the reasons I write most of my fiction in the first person, that little passage I read with Philomena McCarthy, I've written that from the point of view of a 26 year old London policewoman. I'm trying to inhabit the skin and look at the world through the eyes of a 26 year old woman. And I did the same job as a ghostwriter. I had to inhabit the skin of these people and look at the world through their eyes and and i think ghostwriting taught me to capture voice, unique voice to make sure that it, every one of us is different. If, if I was ghostwriting, your story in a call you, your story would sound completely different to mine, you have a different tone of praise, you have different tone, a different sense of humour, different sensibilities. And I would have to capture that.
Nicole Abadee 15:15
I was wondering about that in this book, especially where there are two female protagonists. And we're going to move to talk about those in a moment, Philomena and Tempe, you capture the female voice, so authentically, I know that you've done that before in other books. But here, it's really very striking, especially the the main protagonist, or Philomena, whose story or whose perspective, we're really hearing this story through. And I wanted to ask how you do right so convincingly in the female voice, I know that you have three daughters, but listening to you explain that now. It's, it's I think I've answered my own question. Clearly, the fact that you've been a ghostwriter for women, has given you the ability to speak very authentically, and very convincingly in the female voice, and you really do it so well, in this book.
Michael Robotham 16:04
Thank you. Yeah, it's that and I think, and look it is to being surrounded by women. I, you know, I used to joke that, you know, there's only there's only Ollie the dog and me, and we've both been spayed. You know, apart from that we're just surrounded by women. But no, it also, I, you know, I know, when I wrote "The Secret She Keeps" you know, which was told the point of two women, you know, they're both at the beginning of the book, you know, are pregnant. And that's a book that's about deeply female issues, like pregnancy and childbirth, and childlessness, and these are deeply female issues. And, you know, I spent a lot of time reading mommy blogs and eaves dropping on mothers groups. You know, the fact of the matter is, you know, women when they get together and they go for a walk, you know, during lockdown, or whatever, aren't discussing the footy results from the weekend, you know, they, their, you know, what they talk about and think about are completely different to what, you know, men talk about, and think about. And so, it's an interesting area because I was slightly worried with when when I first began writing, probably not so much, more so now than then, in writing in the female perspective about deeply, deeply feminine issues, was that I was opening myself up for criticism. I know there's a big issue about cultural appropriation and there's an issue about gender appropriation, if you're writing from the point of view of a trans character or, or a gay character and you're not trans or gay. And I was sort of waiting for someone to sort of say, how dare you as a white middle aged balding grumpier by the year, middle aged man, how dare you think that you can understand women well enough to try to write from their perspective? and and I sort of took the attitude well, how are we ever going to achieve or hope to achieve genuine equality if you don't allow someone, a man, don't allow him to try to empathise so completely, and understand so completely that he inhabits the skin? And, you know, sometimes I would, I think women should be able to write from a male perspective. And I sort of think you have to allow us to do, we have to understand each other, we have to empathise completely with each other to be able to do that, and if I get it wrong, by all means, attack me if their voice is not genuinely above. If I if I get it wrong, then I'm open for all that criticism. But don't don't tell me I can't at least give it a crack.
Nicole Abadee 18:33
You certainly haven't got it wrong in this book, I'd say you've nailed it. It's um, it's it's a very authentic voice. We'll come to talk about Philomena in a moment, I just had one more question about some of your earlier books. "The Secrets She Keeps" has been made into a BBC TV series starring Laura Carmichael from Downton Abbey. How do you feel about that? How does it feel to see your creations come to life on the screen and how involved were you?
Michael Robotham 18:59
It was funny, it was actually a joint, it was an Australian production which the BBC bought and they've now funded the second series because it was the one of the most watched shows on the BBC last year. The first Australian drama to ever premiere on BBC One in primetime. And it got astonishing audience sort of beginners and, and the BBC One, a second series, which we're filming in September COVID lockdowns, you know, may well, delay that. I was involved in storyboarding that, that first series, and I've been involved in some of the writing on the second series. And oh, look, it's an interesting. I mean, I think they did a fine job. I think, you know, and I'm very thrilled with the way it turned out. But it has sort of taught me why I love being a writer of novels. And I'm in no great hurry to rush in like a lot of Lot of well known novelists have gone on to be TV writers. And I'm in no great hurry.
Nicole Abadee 19:08
Why? Why is that?
Michael Robotham 19:24
Because in this sense, this is going to sound really conceited and arrogant but as a writer, I am God. Okay, I get to decide what happens to what character in when, and, and of course, I have editors who advise me and, and I'd be mad if they were all telling me to change something, you know, but I don't have to change something if they want me to, you know, you know, I can keep it exactly as it is. And I get, I get control. Whereas when you write for TV or film, you have producer notes, distributed notes, network notes, director notes, actor notes, you have all these people that can come in, and want you to chop and change. And I get to the point where I'm just sort of screaming at them saying, No, no, it's fine. Leave it alone. And the other thing I discovered, you know, I mean, the imagination people set the idea imagination is far more powerful than any film. I mean, feel weak right now imagination is far greater than the fear we can capture on, you know, and create generate on on screen. But the whole filming process is so boring. Watching, I went on set only a handful of times, not even that, when they were filming "The Secret She Keeps", and watching them film the same scene from 12 different angles. I just thought, Oh, my God, this is watching paint dry. And I was you know, it's much more exciting in my cabana of cruelty, where I can have really exciting stuff happening.
Nicole Abadee 21:37
Michael, I've heard you say a number of times, and I've read that you've said that you tend not to plot your books. That you come up with an idea and then you create a group of characters, and then you let the story unfold from there. So I was wondering, what was the idea behind this book, "When You Are Mine?"
Michael Robotham 21:52
Several sort of seeds. And I'm glad to use the word idea, because so often people use the word inspired. And I and I hate the idea that a crime would inspire anyone to do anything, even a crime writer to write a novel. But I saw a really interesting documentary, or I can't remember, it was a four corners report, or something on 730. And it was about domestic violence or domestic abuse involving the victims being the partners of police officers, and how the police failed oto investigate their own when it comes to domestic abuse. And I suddenly thought, how helpless would you be, if the very people you would normally turn to for help, couldn't help you? And the very people that potentially could take you to a women's shelter, which is supposed to be secret locations where your partner cannot find you, but because your partner is a police officer, he knows where those shelters are, he can get to you? Because they have access to police computers, they can track your mobile phone number, they can track your movements, they can track, they can, you know, it's it, there is no way to hide. And I just thought that was such a terrible sort of situation to be in that that was sort of the seed of the idea behind "When You Were Mine." And the other one, I guess was about the other areas, toxic, toxic friendships, and I and there's a scene in the book, which actually is based on a real life event, and it's not giving too much away, but it's basically someone who had had, you know, a friend who had become almost indispensable in their life, you know, the sort of person that would do everything I pick up their dry cleaning, and, you know, do things for them who just seem to always be there and which is lovely, really, you know, initially until such a point, a point comes where you suddenly think Well, hold on, you know, they're too close. And in this particular case, it was and the scene in the book is where someone discovered that their their pantry, someone had come to the house and and rearrange their pantry and put everything in alphabet and then written labels on everything. But
Nicole Abadee 24:00
in the handwriting of the the kitchen owner, that was one of the creepiest scenes in the book for me
Michael Robotham 24:07
To have copied your own handwriting on it and you suddenly think that yeah, so that's based on a real story. And I thought, yeah, okay, I'm going to somehow put those two together.
Nicole Abadee 24:17
Michael, I was interested as to why you said it in London. London's plays a very dissected character in this book, it's it's very important that the setting is London and there's a lot of discussion of places in London and London as a city. I know that you spent time living in London years ago, why did you choose to sit this is to set this in London rather than Australia for example?
Michael Robotham 24:38
It's very I'm yet to set a book in Australia. You know, even though this is home for me, I mean, I guess part of it. I mean, the story I love telling is the years and years ago, I mean my very first novel might the greatest ever run published Australian novel is still sitting in my bottom drawer. And it was almost it was set in a small fishing village in in Australia. And it was almost published by by Penguin in the UK. And this was going back and sort of 1985. Okay, I was 25 years old. And I missed out by a single vote in a publishing meeting, I needed the unanimous vote, I got a one. And so they didn't, they didn't publish it. And I was told afterwards that the reason they didn't publish it is that if I'd set that same book in England, Ireland, Scotland or Wales, they would have published it in a heartbeat. But because I'd set it in Australia, it was just and I was living and working in the UK at that point, as a journalist, I just said it was just a little too hard to launch a new writer in the UK market. With a book that was set in Australia. I think the world's moved on a lot since then. But back in those days, it was pretty much the British would read British fiction and the Americans would read American fiction and in Australia, we would read whatever they deign to send us. We now have our own vibrant publishing industry, of course. And in that book, now, I've got publishers falling over themselves to want me to pull that book out of the bottom drawer. But while it stays on the burner, it will always be Australia's greatest ever unpublished novel. A moment I take it out and all bets are off. But I guess when I when I sat down to write the suspect, which was many years later, I was in between ghostwriting projects, and I had a three month window and I wrote 117 pages. And I sat down, I thought, Well, okay, that first novel, I set in Australia, and let's set in all my publishing context. So as a ghostwriter, they're all in the UK. I thought, well, that's where I have my contacts, that's where I had my agent. So let's set a book in the UK and see what happens. And of course, that happens in seven eight pages triggered a bidding war at the London Book Fair in 2002. And, you know, went ballistic and sold into more than 20 translations and and after that moment, I continued setting books in the UK or life or death I set in Texas, but I do intend to set a book in Australia at some point, but I guess at the moment. Look, it's almost distance is an interesting thing. You know, when I, when I lived in London, I wrote a book set in Australia because I could remember Australia so vividly, because I missed it so much. And when I live in Australia, I find I can set books in London because I, I recall it so vividly. And I miss it. I go back there. Well, until the last couple of years. I go back there two or three times a year.
Nicole Abadee 27:30
Let's talk a little bit now about the two women at the heart of this book, Philomena and Tempe. Tell us a little bit more about the main protagonists Philomena McCarthy. What do we know about her and in particular, something you you adverted to earlier - What do we know about her family and her background?
Michael Robotham 27:48
Yeah, I mean, Philomena, once you know, that opening chapter, the few pages I read, and that's the reason she becomes a policewoman is because of that, that figure that she saw remade all the dust and the debris that young policewoman had completed. But Philomena filamentous father, family and the McCarthy family, her father was Edward McCarthy and notorious sort of London gangster, who were three brothers and the four brothers. You know, three of the brothers have been to prison. Edward McCarthy is the only one that Philomena's his father that avoided prison. But he's sort of remade himself as so many of these figures do. He now calls himself a property developer. And he's a seriously wealthy man. And he became wealthy on the back of the London Olympics, because so much of the East End of London that was transformed into the Olympic Stadium and all the Olympic facilities, you know, he managed to not only buy up vast tracts of that, but pretty much control the concrete and the scaffolding and the security and find those nefarious means to pretty much mean that his companies won all those tenders, because he either threatened or he blackmailed, or he just bullied his way into making this fortune. And so Philomena has this in a background she has, the police don't want anything to do with her, but she fights and threatens to sue them and under the British law, there's nothing to stop her becoming a police woman. But this is in her background and the family. She has been estranged from them for 10 years, but she's engaged to be married, and the family Her father is turning 60 and he desperately wants his only daughter back in his life. And that's the clash that's coming.
Nicole Abadee 29:28
She talks about that she's in her late 20s. And we learn that very early on that she hasn't seen her father for about 10 years. She feels a lot of anger towards him. She says she hates his new wife, his second wife and she hates his house and she hates so many things about him. Why does she feel so much anger towards him?
Michael Robotham 29:48
I guess it comes from a lot of things because I mean, she she's very close to her mum. And of course her father did he very prosaic thing of running off with a much younger, younger sort of Secretary And her her mother's very religious, very Catholic and and you know, he's not going to remarry still considers herself in a sense to be married, that was the one marriage she was ever going to have. And, and she refused, the mother refused to take any of the money that she was owed really from from that marriage. And so, a mother lives a very modest life running a beauty sort of sale on, which is in dire straits after all the COVID locked down to riches in massive debt. And yet a father is living this incredible sort of, you know, luxurious life and mixing with sort of, you know, celebrities and all sorts of things like that. And and so, she resents that about him. She resents you know, how he made his money. She resents how he treated her mother. And she resent how he uses people. And he, you know, and that's the reason I think it again, she uses the word hate. But as I always warn my daughters, they use the word hate too often or too regularly. It's like when you sort of when they don't want to wait a particular meal. I hate that. Well, I mean, there's a real difference between not liking something and hating something.
Nicole Abadee 31:08
Michael, I wanted to ask why Philomena became a police officer, you've referred to that opening scene, which you took us to. And when she was 11, young and impressionable. There was this wonderful police woman who was so comforting that on that occasion, but I did wonder also, if to some extent, she wanted to become a police officer in a sort of deliberate rebellion against her father and his background. And we've got colleagues who sort of hinted things like this, at one point, a colleague says to her, 'I think you're just trying to prove you're nothing like your father," how much does that drive her to be to want to be a police officer to start with, and to be the sort of crusading police officer that she turns out to be in this book?
Michael Robotham 31:50
I think it's a lot of motivation for her, you know, and I think it's an interesting, I mean, it's one of the great moral dilemmas in the book, of course, because you know, here she is, she's come from this background of this corrupt family. And she thinks she's going into this organiSation with, you know, upholds justice and right, and she discovers just how much corruption there is within the London Metropolitan Police. And that really, in any organisation, you know, that she what she thought she was escaping from, she's gone back into, in that sense. And I think there is a lovely scene where she discovers that when she graduates from Henden, the police college and she graduated equal top of her class. And she had no idea that among the crowd, her father was there that he'd gone, secretly gone to watch her graduate. And she, in her heart of hearts, thought she had disappointed him by you know, that this was a real stick in the eye, you know, I become a police officer, that you that must really gall you. But he says to I couldn't have been prouder of watching you graduate, you know, and that's, and I think she discovers as a lot of children do that, you're proud of them regardless, as long as you know, this, they're always going to be your child. And he was proud of the fact that she was successful, you know, and that she was good at what she was doing. And I think that that surprised her, but it also helped to try to repair some of that. Some of those sort of bonds that have been broken.
Nicole Abadee 33:19
Tell us now about that opening, saying when Philomena and a colleague are called to a domestic violence incident, can you describe what they se and how Philomena deals with that situation?
Michael Robotham 33:32
Yeah, I mean, initially, it's a typical, I mean, it's the job that police hate most domestic abuse call outs because they're often so helpless. Because even if it's because some you know, you've got a drunken partner that's become violent or aggressive. So often, the victim isn't willing to press charges. And if they don't, they're not willing to press charges, here's nothing the police can really do apart from perhaps take, arrest them if they've, you know, and lock them up for a few hours to cool down. And in this case, Tempe answers the door ,Tempe, Brown answered the door and she's bloodied and she's bruised and she's claiming she's home alone, but in fact, they sense quite quickly. here's someone hiding behind the door. And, and initially, this perpetrator doesn't reveal that he's a police officer. He wants the police to go away, he says it's, you know, she hurt herself accidentally. And it's only when Tempe does exactly what she should do. You know, she has to make sure the victim is, Tempe's okay. And you know, it's only when it escalates that she decides to arrest this police officer. He claims he really is a police officer, but they don't know what they're believing or not. And she uses it's really interesting to read but she uses a karate technique to take him down which is actually illegal in the police in the London Metropolitan Police. You're only allowed to arrest someone using what you've been trained, you know, at, at sort of police college, you cannot use martial arts,
Nicole Abadee 35:08
Even if it's a battle between a small woman and a larger man?
Michael Robotham 35:12
Even if it's a battle and so this is why Philamena is a small woman and this guy was much heavier and stronger, and that's why she she'd always, she taught herself karate. Or you know, she'd been taught karate, and she's she taught lessons herself. And so she bought she took him down and in the safest possible way. But that was then used against her. Because when he got to the police station, he divulged a complaint against her and the techniques she used. So suddenly, instead of he being in all this trouble for having abused his mistress, she was in trouble. And she faced disciplinary proceedings. And that's when she began to realise the powers that were lining up against her.
Nicole Abadee 35:49
And that's largely because of who he is this Darren Goodall, isn't it? So he's not just any old police officer. Tell us a bit about his background.
Michael Robotham 35:59
Yeah, he is. Darren Goodall had become quite famous in the Metropolitan Police for about 18 months earlier, there had been a knife attack, which they initially thought may have been a terrorist attack. But basically, a particular person with a mental illness had gone or gone berserk with a knife and stabbed three people and he was with his family at Camden markets and he intervened and he wrestled this man and suffered serious injuries and disarm this man and held him until help arrived and he won the Queen's Gallantry medal. And he went to Buckingham Palace and received the Medal from the queen and he became the poster boy for the London Metropolitan Police. I mean, he was he was what it meant to be a true hero in the London Metropolitan Police. Like they could use it for recruiting purposes, you know, they could roll him up at a talk shows. So being the pinup boy, they did not want to see their pinup boy being charged with domestic violence, and which is why they had to hush that up. And it's why they had to silence Philomena.
Nicole Abadee 37:03
And without wanting too give much away because we certainly don't want any spoilers, What becomes clear through the book is that he is a serial offender, he's a serial domestic violence offender. So although on the outside he's this great, highly decorated police officer, national hero, in fact, we discover he's a serial abuser of women, was he based on anyone in particular, or was he a just a creation of yours?
Michael Robotham 37:30
Oh look, it's it's not hard to find people to base him on when we look at the serious problems of domestic abuse in, in Australia and the UK. And I make I make note in the, in the acknowledgments of this book that, you know, we have one, one woman a week dying in Australia. It's three women a day in America. And you know, it's three women a week in the UK, are dying at the hands of a partner, of a violent partner. And so it's not hard to find inspiration for, you know, for people like him. And I guess, you know, it's this issue. I mean, one of the books that I read, in doing my research is Jess Hill's amazing book, "Look What You Made Me Do," you know, again, which, you know, she managed to interview a lot of, of these serial abusers who, who many of them say, talk about, you know, why they do it, you know, and, you know, doesn't forgive what they did, but just the rage, they feel and, and they know what they're doing is wrong, you know, doesn't excuse anything they do. But it's a fascinating insight into why we need coercive control laws in this country, which the UK does have, but we don't we don't have them in this country yet.
Nicole Abadee 38:44
I want to ask you about this. It's so obvious from the way you portray this domestic abuse situations. And you do specifically deal with this issue of coercive control, which is behaviour less than actual abuse, but which is either a precursor to or part of a pattern of domestic abuse. And one of the victims in this book has, one of Darren's victims, we learn that he is cutting off her friends on the phone, he's controlling how much money she spends. He's not letting her drive a car. I was interested to hear that you read Jess Hill's book. I was wondering about that she's been a guest on this program before. Tell me about the research that you did. It was obviously pretty thorough, because that that issue of coercive control is something that's being talked about now in New South Wales. That issue of whether or not that should be criminalised. It's a very hot topic. I'd like to hear about the research that you did that enabled you to write so convincingly about the problem of domestic abuse.
Michael Robotham 39:38
Yeah, no, it's I mean, Jess Hill's book was invaluable, but it's one of one of the lesser known books that I ghostwrote, was a book by Linda Kane and it's called "Art of the Darkness" and Linda Cain, who was you know, had this perfect life was married with two beautiful daughters in a private school in the UK, her husband was a very successful lawyer, and she filled, filled a car with petrol and shopping in the supermarket one day and then drove off a cliff. And she figured that no one, no one would think it was suicide, if she just filled the car with petrol and shopping, they would think it was an accident. And, and she survived. She survived that. And she spent the next sort of 18 months in, in in a psychiatric hospital under suicide watch, and kept a diary, which is what the book is sort of, based upon, when you unpack. And it wasn't actually a source of the husband, it was a first marriage that they that she talked about. I mean, this man took her to live in basically a cabin in the wilderness to keep it not just cut off the phone, not just cut off a family, then took her and imprisoned her in a cabin in the wilderness. And, you know, would become, I mean, would literally look to make sure that there were there were no tire tracks on the track coming in. And even if they weren't, he was still convinced that someone would visit her while she'd gone to work. And you'd have to beat her up. You know, I mean, it was just astonishing what she went through before she escaped. And so it was sort of Linda Kane story and Jess Hill and then doing, just doing lots of reading of online blogs. I mean, it's I find that an invaluable source because so many, so many people, whether it be you know, whether it's self harm, or whether it be people that have suffered abuse and whatnot, they are writing it up in blogs, and they are sharing their stories, and you get their opportunity to sort of to read their stories and to pick and choose details to try to obviously hide the identities to make sure you're not following anyone's story too closely.
Nicole Abadee 41:47
Let's talk now a bit about Tempe Brown, the woman that Philomena rescues, what do we know about her? What's she like?
Michael Robotham 41:55
Tempe Brown was actually is Phil, because she so badly bruised when Phil say sir Phil only just sort of senses that they've met before. And it's not for, you know, until they're on their way to the hospital law. They she takes Tempe to hospital for an X ray, that she realised they're at school together. Tempe was a few years ahead of her at school. And champion was one of those people that feel absolutely admired and adored. She was she was beautiful and popular and one of the head girls but had left the school quite suddenly under a bit of a cloud. And Phil sort of remembered there been some rumours around. But Tempe had gone off to her family had moved to Northern Ireland. Phil's You know, it doesn't you know, I mean, she she initially you know, this is just professional, I mean, or, you know, they there's no idea they're going to be a friendship when you rescue someone from a domestic violence situation. You don't immediately become friends, but it's only I think, what happens is that when, when Philomena arrests Darren Goodall, you know, the, the, the abuser, with her techniques, I mean, Tempe is an or the fact that this quite small woman, you know, has managed to absolutely floor this strong buddy man who'd been beating Temoe around. And she's just seen all of Phil's strength and, and, and so Philomena, you know, mentioned that she that was a karate technique, and Philomena was teaching a karate lesson weeks later, and Tempe shows up at the studio, having obviously researched karate studios through London to establish where Philomena you know what I mean, that is so should have been a little sign that that perhaps Tempe you know wasn't you know, completely on the level but but um, that's when the friendship you know, blossoms when temperatures can you teach me?
Nicole Abadee 43:47
And then it develops very rapidly, doesn't it? And before we know it, Tempe is organising Phil's wedding for her. So can you describe you've said in the acknowledgments I've heard you say elsewhere this, one of the themes of this book is toxic friendship. describe to us how that relationship between Phil and Tempe develops and what is it that makes it so I used the word creepy before sinister.
Michael Robotham 44:13
Yeah, it's one of those things I mean, we all, it's funny, we all the term I've sometimes used is when it comes to our friends there are haters and there are drainers we have some friends that energise us that literally from the moment you see them and that you light up and they've they're full of so much energy that you might be feeling a bit down but they will brighten you up. And there are other friends we have who are drainers who would who are the so I guess the man is in the windows and who can suddenly manage even if you're in a good mood to bring you down and and then there are the sort of friends that you think who are just very, very they're gaslighting you in a sense, I mean very, you know, they're saying Oh, I love your new hair. You know I love your new hair. But didn't you think about maybe putting highlight not... you know they've they can't even give you a comment. Without making turning something negative about it, you know, and and sometimes you don't realise that they're doing it where they just slowly they're criticising you or something you're wearing or your boyfriend or your partner or they're just finding ways to bring you down. And that's a toxic friend, you know, and, and in Tempe's case, you don't quite know initially whether she wants to. I mean, all, Tempe is one of those people that doesn't, when she has a friend, it's got to be a best friend. It's got to be an only friend. You can't have any other friends. You've got to be her best friend. So it's almost like she wants feel completely. She wants ownership. She wants Phil's attention. She wants Phil's other friends to disappear. She never wants Phil's fiance to really be out of the picture and said she just wants Phil to herself.
Nicole Abadee 45:55
What do the other friends what to Phil's other friends think of Tempe?
Michael Robotham 45:59
Well, it's interesting them because I mean, one of the issues I had in writing the book was, you know, I don't want people to think that Philomena is blind to this, you know, that she doesn't see that. It's a bit. You know, I mean, Philomena is naive in a sense that she wants to believe the best in people, but she became a police officer for that very reason. You know, she wants to she's dealing with the times that complete drugs. I mean, when you look at the the most people that come into the, the, the abbot of the police force, that they're often they're often criminals or the drug addicts or, or they've got mental health illnesses. I mean, the vast majority of people of the police arrests in any given day, are people that you know, have had have issues with poverty, deprivation, mental health, drugs, or whatever. And so Philomena wants to think the best of everyone, and so she gives Tempe and suddenly, I mean, Tempe's cleverest thing Tempe does is I'll arrange your wedding for you and I'm good at that sort of thing. Because suddenly, it's not just about, I want to distance myself from you, I tend to you're getting too close, as you know, I need you to help looking after this wedding because no one else can then you've got you've arranged at all. So she's sort of trapped. And even when she reached the point where she thinks, okay, after the wedding, after the wedding, I'm cutting timbi off, you know, but she keeps making excuses. And her friends are saying, Phil, Philomena, this is she's not good. You know, there's something weird about,
Nicole Abadee 47:31
Michael, you mentioned earlier, this issue about the police and looking after their own protecting their own. There's a lot about the police in this book, there are some good police and there are some bad police. How did you go about researching them and the police culture? Is that something where you were drawing on your experience that you talked about as a ghostwriter?
Michael Robotham 47:52
A bit of both, I mean, I again, knowledge, a wonderful placement in and Nick Lucas in London who helped me, but I have to sort of say to people like, Nick, because Nick is such a stickler for protocol. And I say, if I stack exactly the protocol, the book would never get written, you know, I have to find this, you know, it's like, because, you know, it's like, when you read a courtroom novel, or, you know, a legal novel, if anyone attending spent time ever spent time in a courtroom knows that if you just put that down on paper to the most boring thing imaginable, you know, they're all stylised. So I do partly on my own experience, partly on on help from police serving police officers, partly on the even wonderful series, like Line of Duty, which is about police corruption in, in, in the UK, all of the above, really, you know, drawing upon drawing upon as much as you can and look at any any sort of anything else to say, but I'm sure when a when a doctor reads, you know, or watches the medical drama, they probably scoff and go, Oh, that would never happen. You know, I did know that detectives that would read the book and scoff and say, Well, that would never happen. But you know, it's fiction. I do, I've got to tell you that I do laugh that there's a there's a heart surgeon in the book called Emily Granger. And that is the actual name and character of my heart surgeon that that looked after me and gave me a quadruple bypass and she had no idea that I'd put her in the book until until she started getting phone calls. And her Her mother was so excited.
Nicole Abadee 49:31
Something that I thought was interesting, and you're the first fiction writer that I have seen to have done this. You mentioned COVID a couple of times in the book. Tempe says at one stage that one of her sisters or brothers died of COVID. And I thought that was really interesting. And this is a conversation I've been having with writers before and and with other people in the arts, to what extent do we talk About COVID? And do we make it part of the artistic worlds that, that we're creating?
Michael Robotham 50:06
What I initially the first draft it was, this book was basically it had COVID all the way through it. And it was my publishers around the world that said, Can you take it out, we don't want any COVID references. And I said, Well, I don't want to not reference that at all. They do sort of, they felt as though A) it dated the book - straightaway, soon, people reading this book and four or five years time, and it's written in the first person present. So they felt dated at too much. And B) they thought really, people want to be not reminded of COVID they want to be taken away from COVID them reading these books is a form of escape. And so I took most of the COVID References out by kept a couple in there because I just felt as though because oddly enough, I I faced a problem with my previous book "When She Was Good," which actually begins in the opening chapter, it says may 2020, is setting. And there's no reference to COVID because that book was written before COVID even existed, and I had to put in the acknowledgments, I had time, just to put a paragraph in acknowledgments. I apologise for anyone reading this because, you know, I just said, but the book was written before COVID. And I always assumed that I'd put COVID in this book. But in the end, you know, as I said, I understand why the publishers told me take it out. And oddly enough, even the few references you'd mentioned, I've had a few little bit of reader feedback through just you know, tweets and whatnot, sort of saying, Oh, I wish you hadn't mentioned COVID. I mean, people don't want to be reminded.
Nicole Abadee 51:33
No, it's really interesting. As I say, I had this discussion with a friend who was a playwright. On the one hand, people want escapism, we want to forget about what we're going through, on the other hand, as a writer or a creator, in contemporary times, how do you just leave that alone?
Michael Robotham 51:50
Yeah. What's interesting initially, it's funny, I had, you know, with all the with all these zoom meetings, there were publishers falling over themselves and ideas floating around and people, people, publishers talking to me about oh can you write a locked down mystery? I mean, this is going to be can you do with like a zoom murder mystery? I mean, people imagine that, that our entire artistic sort of thing would all be COVID base, we'd have COVID novels and COVID plays, and I don't think it's gonna happen.
Nicole Abadee 52:17
Now. I don't think we do want that. Michael, I know that you regard the late John Lecarre very highly, you've described him as your absolute literary hero on one occasion, what makes his writing so good.
Michael Robotham 52:31
I think John Lecarre curry was just the master of beautifully drawn characters. I mean, so many people assume that when you're dealing with crime or mystery fiction, it's all plot that and, and what I try, I keep telling people is that if you ask them what their favorite crime or mystery novel is, and I go, what's that about? They straightaway begin talking about the character, long after they've forgotten the plot, long after they've forgotten the plot. It's the character that stays with them as the character that that brings you back to the same series time and time again. And I think the Lecarre was just a master of creating our remarkable, like, I mean, characters that lived and breathed on the page. And, and then also, this sort of amazing moral dilemma, you know, I mean, I re-read just this year for her Lecarre a special after he, he passed away, "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold." And it is just, you know, without that great a spy novel ever written, I mean, but it's just the most astonishingly beautiful novel, and the moral dilemma at the end of it, you know, is to you know, you know, right and wrong, you know, which so whether you be that how I do the Cold War, and, you know, who were the good guys, and who were the bad guys, because they both seem pretty odious. You know? It's just astonishing a way that Lecarre could could do that.
Nicole Abadee 53:58
Michael, this book is a standalone. You've done a few of those before, in addition to the two very successful series, The Joe O'Loughlin series and the Cyrus Haven series. What do you enjoy about writing a standalone like this? What can you do that you can't do when you're writing as the series?
Michael Robotham 54:17
It is a standalone, although I'm under enormous pressure at the moment from people saying we want more from Philomena,
Nicole Abadee 54:22
That's my next question.
Michael Robotham 54:25
Look, the beauty of the standalone is I mean, I liken and writing a series, too, you know, it's a bit like you know, I love the Cuyrus Haven / Evie Cormack series. But spending a year inside their heads is like spending a year and a two man tent with two other people or two person tent. And it doesn't matter how good friends they are, and how much I love them. You get tired and you get you want to go away for a while and you want to break and writing a standalone. Typically when I was a ghostwriter. I got to look at the through the eyes of someone fresh and new. And, and writing style and let's we look at the world through the eyes of someone new Philomena and create this whole blank canvas hse while new characters. Writing a series comes with its problems, you've got to you've got to reintroduce characters that people might never, you've got to assume that someone's picking up the third book in the series, never having read the first two, you have to reintroduce characters in a new fresh way that your existing readers Don't go, oh my god, this is boring. We know all this, you've got to find new fresh ways of doing that. Whereas in a standalone, you don't have those problems. You just have to create your compelling characters and let the story unfold
Nicole Abadee 55:40
Well you're a victim of your own success, because that was my next question is having created this fabulous character of Philomena? might you be tempted to do Philomena books?
Michael Robotham 55:51
It's interesting. I've got I've got an Evie and Cyrus book coming the moment, which I'm writing now. And I haven't completely decided whether to do to do another Philomena in a book. I'm tempted because the other you know, big news. Well, I mean, at the moment is going ahead is the the Joseph O'Loughlin. tv series begins filming in London in September. And you know, with an amazing cast who I can't reveal yet, because they haven't been made public. But it's an amazing cast. And, and I'm sort of tempted, because it's been, you know, "The Other Wife"he other week was the last Joe Laughlin book, which is it's good four years ago now. And I'm sort of tempted it the TV series comes out next year, to bring out a Joe Laughlin book for the first time in five years to bring Joe O’Loughlin book out to coincide with with the TV series, which might be fun, because there's revisit Joe. And it's five years. I mean, I'd be excited. So I don't know. I mean, so Philomena and the family might have to wait, I don't know. Who knows. I mean, if I come up with a good idea at some expense, if I come up with a good idea, you know, that excites me.
Nicole Abadee 57:05
Final question. You said once that your agent called you The Reluctant thriller writer, why was that?
Michael Robotham 57:12
I didn't realise I didn't realise I was writing crime novels. When my first manuscript at "The Suspect" sold on 117 pages. I didn't know how it ended. I didn't know I was a crime novel. I thought it was very much like a mystery, but a Hitchcockian sort of, you know, man in the wrong place at the wrong time type story. And that book sold around the world and it was often multiple book contracts. And, and I assumed I didn't know that I, you know, there I was signing up to be a crime and thriller writer until my agent said, Have you read your contract? And it actually said in my contract that I will write something that is a similar nature, and I suddenly my initial reaction was, Oh, no, I should be able to write anything I want. You know, if I want to write a romance, let me write a romance. And it's going well, not until the contract is fulfilled. So that was my reluctance. Initially, I didn't want to be pigeonholed. I wanted my books to go. Not just in the crime section in the bookshop, I wanted them to go in the in the in the fiction section, I wanted them. I didn't want to be pigeonholed. I now don't mind at all, because I know where people go looking for the book. And I also think that crime writing allows you to shine a light into the darkest areas of society and the human psyche. And, and, you know, a lot of fiction, not all great fiction, doesn't it, but a lot of very ordinary fiction is sort of navel gazing. Whereas I think, you know, good fiction should be talking looking at problems like domestic abuse and coercive control. Good fiction should be tackling big issues as well as telling small stories in compelling ways.
Nicole Abadee 59:02
Michael, thank you so much for joining me today on Books, Books, Books, it's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you. Once again, huge congratulations on the book, hitting number one in the fiction lists. Both weeks since its publication, you can't do better than that. And good luck promoting it.
Michael Robotham 59:19
Thank you very much, Nicole. It's a pleasure. Thank you.
Nicole Abadee 59:26
Thank you for listening to Books, Books, Books. If you liked what you heard in this episode, please go to my website, nicoleabadee.com.au. To listen to all the episodes and find out more about the podcast you can also find me Nicole Abadee on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and look for my reviews in Good Weekend. You can subscribe to Books, Books, Books at Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google and all the usual places. It would be lovely if you could go to any of these platforms and give a rating or review. Thank you. I look forward to talking books with you again soon.