Burnt out by work and kids, and searching for a hobby, Kerryn wrote a bestseller

A casual comment to her book-club friends set Kerryn Mayne on the path to releasing her first novel.

“I’ve always wanted to write a book,” she declared, at that dinner at a Port Melbourne pub five years ago.

First-time novelist Kerryn Mayne in the Dandenong Ranges, where her book is set.Credit: Simon Schluter

It was a throwaway line, but the guest speaker at the meeting was bestselling author of nine novels Sally Hepworth, who heard it, and threw Mayne an inadvertent challenge.

“Sally said, ‘Well, you should just write one’,” says Mayne.

It ignited a spark that led to the publication in February 2023 of her first novel, the part-crime, part-contemporary fiction Lenny Marks Gets Away With Murder.

Mayne’s story is part of ‘The Year I …’ series, where The Age profiles the experiences of Victorians in 2023.

Mayne said juggling the writing of Lenny with her job in the police force and parenting two children under three didn’t faze her.

“I was a bit burnt out with work, that was all I was doing,” said Mayne, who now has four children under six, including 16-month-old twin girls.

The cover of the novel, which was released in February 2023.

“I was really overly invested in work, so I did need something for myself because I didn’t otherwise have a hobby, apart from book club.”

Mayne was impressed by how down-to-earth Hepworth was: a suburban mother and writer. (Albeit one whose novel, The Mother-in-Law, has been optioned for a TV series by US comedian Amy Poehler.)

“She could be us,” Mayne said of Hepworth. “She’s just somebody who wanted to write a story, and did.”

Mayne says writing fiction was a bit of a challenge, but when she started she loved it.

And she was good at it. Lenny Marks Gets Away With Murder, published by Penguin, is a bestseller and was shortlisted for the Ned Kelly Award for best debut crime fiction.

St Martin’s Press has paid a six-figure sum for the US rights.

“I’m so excited,” Mayne said. “Still a little in disbelief. Because it’s something I made up in my head, but it’s now being read and enjoyed by people.”

She said coming up with the main character, Lenny, was the key.

Lenny is a reclusive 37-year-old primary school teacher, who learns that her violent stepfather is about to be released after 20 years in prison, forcing Lenny to revisit horrific memories of childhood abuse.

The book is set in a town like Belgrave, in Melbourne’s Dandenong Ranges, with some eccentric characters.

As a police detective or uniform officer for 15 years, Mayne often investigated domestic violence, and the book explores what might happen to a survivor, years after the initial trauma. Mayne admires such people’s strength.

“To have the worst possible things I could imagine thrown at you, and just to have to get up and be functioning and be a member of the community, I really admire that,” she said. “I think it’s incredible, the resilience.”

Mayne wrote Lenny in 2020 when her second child, a son, was a newborn and her first daughter was two.

“We’d get up and go for a walk, get a takeaway coffee, come home, I’d put my son to bed – he’s a great sleeper – and put my daughter in front of the TV and I’d write, for as long as my son slept,” she said.

Mayne has now finished her second novel, which comes out on February 27. Joy Moody is Out of Time is about a woman who dies without telling her twin daughters who their real parents are.

Mayne is buoyed by reader messages she gets via her website, such as the 15-year-old bullied at school who said that Lenny “gives me hope that I’ll find my place”.

Asked what she hopes Lenny Marks Gets Away With Murder achieves, Mayne says: “I hope people read it, and that they’re happier when they finished it than when they started.

“Even though there is ‘murder’ written on the cover, it’s an uplifting book.”

Mayne herself is now a guest at book clubs. Her advice to any budding author? “I would tell them the same thing I was told, which is, ‘Just do it. Just pick up a pen, start writing’. Anyone can do it, you don’t need to be qualified.”

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