For years, Michael Robotham was advised not to set novels in Australia

Just over 20 years ago, the first 117 pages of a crime novel by a former journalist and ghostwriter sparked a bidding war in the international publishing world. As Michael Robotham describes it, “Three o’clock in the morning and we were in bed on the northern beaches and the phone was ringing saying there are five American publishers bidding and four German publishers bidding, and three French publishers bidding. And the Dutch have offered this and this. It was pinch me territory!”

Two decades, two crime series and five stand-alone crime thrillers later, Robotham’s books have garnered a swag of gongs, including two Ned Kellys and three British Crime Writers Awards. There’s also been numerous screen adaptations with more to come. Right now, the celebrated crime writer is as excited as ever about the publication of his latest book, Storm Child, the fourth in a series featuring forensic psychologist Cyrus Haven and Evie Cormac.

Ghostwriter turned crime author Michael Robotham.Credit: Tony Mott

In an endearing video clip on his Facebook page, Robotham unboxes the American and British hardback editions, as well as the Australian paperback. Each, he points out, has their own “stunning jacket”, while happily inhaling their new book smell. “This is my favourite part of the whole writing process,” he tells us. And what a process it has been.

Robotham recalls his first writers festival gig in Melbourne in 2004, perched on a panel as the complete unknown between such luminaries as Michael Connelly and Harlan Coben. “Of course, Harlan and Michael were huge names at that point. I’d only just had my first book published,” he says. “The Suspect came out in March of that year, and it had been huge all around the world, except in Australia.”

At that time, the groundbreaking Peter Corris was still going strong while Peter Temple was towering, as Robotham puts it, “head and shoulders” above the rest with his capacity to write a line that could “make your heart sing”, the criterion he always looks for in a book.

Although Temple was the first Australian to win a CWA Gold Dagger in 2007 as well as the Miles Franklin literary award in 2010, Robotham is quick to point out that in the first decade of the 21st century, Australian crime writers generally struggled to achieve international publication or recognition, although there were small pockets of success.

Even just 15 years ago, he recalls, “I was told by a very senior British publisher that they would be happy to take a crime novel set anywhere in the world except Australia. And I asked why, of course, and he said because there has been no Australian crime writer who has been successful internationally … And, of course, Jane Harper [with The Dry in 2016] completely blew the doors off”. Now, people all over the world want to read Australian crime, especially if it is set in the outback.

Having just returned from a pre-publicity tour in the UK, Robotham, who has hitherto located his books there, says he told his publishers that wanted to write a novel set in Australia. “And instead of getting that reaction of 15 years ago, the gritted teeth and ‘Do you think that’s wise? You know, you might sort of upset your readers’, I got the reaction ‘What a brilliant idea’.” The tide, it would seem, has turned and a number of Australians are now surfing the wave.

As evidence of this, Robotham cites the increasing number of Australian crime writers who have found an international readership, including Chris Hammer and Liane Moriarty. Many are also having their work optioned and adapted for the screen, including J.P. Pomare and Tim Ayliffe, while Garry Disher has apparently just been “discovered” in the UK. Such recognition is still much needed, since, as Robotham regretfully notes, the Australian market is too small to support a crime-writing career without international sales.

Despite this inherent disadvantage, Robotham continues to be impressed by just how supportive the Australian crime-writing community can be. He says whenever a new book is launched by an Australian crime writer, especially the women, they are likely to be surrounded by a posse of crime-writing colleagues. What Australian crime writers really need, however, are more people to read Australian crime fiction, both at home and abroad.

Robotham’s new novel features economic migration and people smuggling.

For Robotham, what comes first is always the story. That and the fact that crime fiction can deal with what Hemingway once described as John Steinbeck’s “angry themes”.

“The beauty of crime fiction is you can tackle those angry themes, you know, those big social issues, and set them against dramatic backdrops, but tell stories of individual people, which is far more powerful anyway,” Robotham says.

In Storm Child, the angry themes are economic migration and people smuggling. Australia, he says, is about to go to an election in which migrants will once again be held responsible for high rents and housing shortages, a tactic that goes all the way back to the gold rush. “When something goes wrong, people blame the migrants, they blame the outsiders, and I wanted to look at that,” Robotham says.

In the first chapter of Storm Child, Cyrus is at a North Sea beach in England when the bodies from a people-smuggling boat that has capsized in the Channel float to shore. Evie, the young woman he has been looking after since he rescued her from an institution, is traumatised by the image of Cyrus carrying a dead child out of the water. This is the catalyst for a narrative which finally reveals how the abused Evie ended up hiding in the walls of a house in the first book in this series, Good Girl, Bad Girl.

The writing process has always been organic for Robotham. “I did not know at the end of the first book who put Evie in the secret room and I didn’t have an overarching arc,” he says. “I had to write each book based on the clues I’d left behind in the first one.” Perhaps even more interesting in terms of the genre is the fact that both Cyrus and Evie have been victims of serious crime in the past and, as Robotham says, “are on a quest to discover why and how, and to repair each other”.

Twenty years on from his first exhilarating breakthrough, Robotham shows no sign of slowing down. He’s just finished a second book featuring the policewoman Philomena McCarthy against a backdrop of domestic violence, whose complication is her gangster family in London. Having started out as a stand-alone book, Robotham can see “enormous scope” in the character. “I just see so many questions ... who does she trust? The people that she swore to work alongside, or her family? At the end of the day, when she’s in real peril, who is going to be there to save her?”

Questioning, politically acute and still thoroughly engaged in the art of storytelling with a social purpose, Robotham is hardly resting on his well-deserved laurels despite the fact that in terms of anniversaries, while he may be heading for silver, he’s already struck gold.

Michael Robotham’s Storm Child is published by Hachette.

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