Author Mark Brandi reveals inspiration for new book The Rip

Mark Brandi brings Melbourne’s criminal underground to life in his latest novel, The Rip, which was inspired by the city’s growing visible street drug problem and homelessness

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When Mark Brandi started writing his second book, he had no idea what the ending would be, who the other characters were or even where he would go beyond chapter one. But he felt compelled to start writing The Rip, the story of a woman living rough on the streets of Melbourne.

“I didn’t have a real sense of where the plot would go, I just started writing the first chapter,” Brandi tells BW Magazine.

“The other characters didn’t exist yet, I just followed her voice and went where it took me.

“I didn’t make the decision to write from a woman’s perspective, it just felt right that she was a woman. I saw her more in terms of her situation in life and where she found herself — homeless and drug addicted — those were the factors that had the biggest impact.”

The Rip is the follow up to his successful debut novel, Wimmera, which was awarded the prestigious British Crime Writers Association Debut Dagger.

Mark Brandi has followed up his award-winning first book Wimmera with The Rip. Picture: Josie Hayden

Brandi worked in the Victorian Justice Department for 10 years and for a few years as a political advisor to the corrections minister. This allowed him to get a good look at the prison system and provided the perfect insight for The Rip. Brandi says it was the growing problem of homelessness and drugs on the streets of inner-city Melbourne that further fuelled the idea for his new book.

“A few years ago the heroin problem on the streets of Melbourne was becoming more acute,” he says. “I had spent quite a bit of time around Victoria Rd in Richmond and I noticed it was more and more visible, you could see people shooting up and people would offer me drugs, it was more in your face than ever before.

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“At the same time, homelessness was also more visible, and it was attracting attention, especially in the CBD where retail traders were complaining about the problem.

“I found the debate interesting, it ranged from those who sympathised to those who just wanted it to go away to those who blame the people themselves and would ask ‘Why can’t you help yourself in this country?’

“I also noticed that the prisons tend to be populated with people who were poor, suffered drug addiction and just cycled through the system.

“That was the bigger issue behind some of my writing.”

Author Mark Brandi was inspired by life on the streets of Melbourne for his new book, The Rip. Picture: Jay Town

Brandi was born in Italy, the youngest of four boys, but his family moved to Australia as post-war immigrants when he was just two and settled in regional Victoria. The rural setting of his childhood gave him plenty of fodder to write Wimmera and his love of true crime, along with a healthy dose of Stephen King novels, inspired him to add a sinister plot line to both his books.

In The Rip, the story may be about a homeless woman, but the plot takes a dark turn when she finds herself living in a share house with a strange man who keeps his bedroom locked with a padlock, and there’s a growing putrid smell coming from it.

“I feel I have been immersed in the criminal world for most of my life,” he says of his career. “My three older brothers are also involved in some way: one is a forensic scientist, another is a prosecutor and another works in the criminal records branch. This in itself is quite funny as we had quite an antagonistic relationship with the police growing up.

“I’ve always been interested in true crime, they’re the first stories I read in the newspaper. I love how these stories reveal the whole range of human emotions and show how people are put to the ultimate test.

“There’s probably something primal at work too, in trying to avoid the potential pitfalls of being a victim of crime yourself.”

Mark Brandi’s new book, The Rip.

Brandi admits one such story he read about inspired part of the plot of Wimmera.

“I read a story, going way back before I started writing, about someone who had been murdered and disposed of in a wheelie bin which had then been filled with concrete and dumped in a river a long way from where he was murdered.”

Both Brandi’s books bring their respective landscapes to life — rural and urban — in very real and authentic ways. And he works hard to make his characters believable through gritty conversations that grip you and pull you into their world. Brandi admits to a little “writer’s vanity” that lets him imagine his words transferred onto the screen.

“I love the idea of what someone will bring to such a project,” he says.

“There was some discussion (about a screenplay) with Wimmera, but nothing has materialised yet. I’ll admit, I’d love to see either, or both, of my books made into films.

“It would allow you to see how someone else sees your story. Every reader creates the world differently in their own mind, when I chat to people who have read my books, they will sometimes tell me they picked up on a connection I didn’t see.

“That’s always really great to hear.”

* The Rip, Hachette Australia, out now.