I was delighted, and honoured, to be asked to speak at the 2nd SheKilda crime convention held in Melbourne in October. And what a wonderful weekend it was, being able to meet and listen to (some of) the over 60 authors and crime-writing-related speakers at the convention which was held at Rydges on Swanston Street in Carlton.
I flew down on Friday morning, so I was in time to join a fascinating walking tour with Meyer Eidelson of melbournewalks.com, titled ‘Solving Melbourne’s Cold Cases’. While the tour didn’t cover much territory geographically, we listened to an account of a plethora of unsolved crimes and mysteries, dating back to Burke’s infatuation with the ‘spider dancer’, the 14 year old Lola Montez which may or may not have been behind his ill-fated dash from Cooper’s Creek to the Gulf of Carpentaria. We heard stories of the ghost of Frederico at the Princess Theatre, a suicide (murder?) in the cathedral, a missing Picasso, the life and times of Squizzy Taylor, and the ‘pyjama girl’, Linda Agostini, along with several other gruesome accounts. We were told there were still large rewards to be claimed for solving these cases – unfortunately, none of us was able to come up with the goods!
The event proper kicked off with a cocktail party and launch where we were welcomed by senior Wurundjeri elder, Joy Murphy, Councillor Ken Ong and the national Director of Writing Australia, Mary Delahunty, followed by an interesting keynote address from international guest, Margie Orford, who talked about her experiences living in and writing about South Africa. She mentioned the huge crime rate there, such that cases are only investigated if they’re rated as likely to feature on television. She also described how she was burgled on one occasion: how her panties were shredded and tampax arranged in a pattern on her bed – but she didn’t think to report it.
Saturday and Sunday were filled with difficult decisions: there were so many wonderful sessions to choose from. Saturday began with ‘A World of Crime’ with Margie Orford, Vanda Symon (NZ), and Shamini Flint, who is from India but who lives in Singapore. It was fascinating to listen to them talking about how crime is rooted in ‘psychogeography’, the culture of the place and society in which they live, and how that informs their novels.
There were planning meetings for my two sessions: ‘Digging up the Past’ with the distinguished and prolific Kerry Greenwood, poet Judith Rodriguez, Sulari Gentill and Carolyn Morwood, chaired by Meg Vann who encouraged us to talk about the historical research and inspiration behind our books. The other session was ‘The Young Frontier’ which I shared with Karen Healey and Nansi Kunze, chaired by Tanya King-Carmichael, during which we discussed our books plus some of the pitfalls when writing for Y/A. I also attended ‘Crimance’ subtitled ‘she always gets her man’, chaired by Anne Gracie and featuring Helene Young, Sandy Curtis and Bronwyn Parry. Judging from the way these authors talked, it seems that blending romance with crimes/mysteries seems like a very good and popular way to go!
I attended the Davitt awards dinner at the Celtic Club on Saturday night – those Sisters sure know how to enjoy themselves! It was a great night, and with some very worthy winners, see website for details:
http://www.sistersincrime.org.au
Shamini Flint was the guest speaker, and kept us in stitches with her dry one-liners about writing her Inspector Singh novels. (She calls Insp. Singh ‘Poirot in a turban – but he does like a good curry and a cold beer.’) Born in India, she says she goes home to weddings and funerals (‘especially funerals’) when she needs inspiration.
I attended two fun (and interesting) sessions on Sunday morning. Vikki Petraitis chaired ‘Laughing in the Dark’ with Kirsty Brooks and Jane Clifton talking about writing humour (and why they choose relatively young protagonists for their books: it’s because they enjoy sending up Gen Y, while menopausal middle aged women are just not that funny to write about!). The next session was ‘Them That Really Do It’ – listening to medico Kathryn Fox, ex-cops YA Erskine and PM Newton and pilot Helen Young talk about why they turned from practising their professions to writing about them. What struck me in particular was how very jaundiced the ex-cops and Kathryn are, and the lack of support they were given.
During our time at the hotel there was a body in the pool, a Miss Manny Quinn, scantily clad in a red dress and with a stiletto heel through her eye! The area was roped off, and authors were invited to write an opening paragraph pertaining to the ‘crime scene’. Wendy James, Alex Palmer and I were asked to judge the competition, and there were
some hilarious entries. The prize was awarded after the closing session, which was titled ‘The Body in the Pool: the who-how-whydunit of solving this crime’. We started with the ‘bug lady’, forensic entymologist Mel Archer, who took us through the gruesome details of how to identify and date insect life on the body and thereby ascertain the likely time of death. Sandra Nicholson, the ‘cop lady’, carefully explained in detail how cops would go about securing the scene of the crime, identifying the body, taking statements etc – all grist to the mill for aspiring crime writers! Finally the ‘forensic lady’ discussed such questions as identifying the time of death through various forms of temperature-taking plus what the post mortem can tell you. After much investigation the offender was finally identified and the cuffs put on Carmel Shute, national co-convenor of SIC, after incriminating evidence was found near the body! Vanda
Symon gave us the final address (from a Kiwi point of view), and a very good time was had by all.
Congratulations to our sisters in Melbourne for organising such a fabulous conference
For the opening cocktail party, a small gang of conspirators artfully arranged the female ‘body’ which had (notionally) been dragged from the pool. The victim had a green stiletto plunged into her right eye and was surrounded by (real) Victoria Police tape. All sorts of ID, credit and loyalty cards spilled out of the handbag lying next to the body.
The body, later identified as Ms Manny Quinn, was to be the star attraction on the rooftop but, being Melbourne, it started to rain just as the cocktail party kicked off so most participants (except for a few diehard smokers) couldn’t start penning the best opening paragraph for a crime story about Quinn’s murder until they stumbled across the crime scene until the next day.
