Crime special on the ABC's Tuesday Book Show

[Lindy Cameron]

How many Aussie's caught the wasted opportunity on our ABC last night.
Three crime writers, a reviewer, and a TV host - and barely an Australian crime novel mentioned.
Shane Maloney and Dorothy Porter were very entertaining but host Jennifer Bryne barely asked them about their own fiction let alone directing the conversation towards the amazing state of crime fiction in this country. All the talk was about the evolutionary 'influence' of dead-white US and UK writers. The only contemporary writers mentioned, apart from our own Peter Temple (who is invariably the only one who ever gets mentioned [more power to him, but there are a helluva lot of us out here]) were Americans - and mostly male writers.
Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with the American writers - obviously - BUT it would be like the ABC inviting Elroy and Lehane onto the show and telling them they could only talk about Australian crime writers - and women writers at that. Mind you, given there are 40 (yes 40) books by Australian women up for this year's Davitt Awards, that might make a very interesting program.

[Daniel Hatadi]

I'm surprised that Maloney was the only high profile author they could get for the show. Would have loved to see Peter Temple mixing it up with that lot. He's never afraid to share his opinion and is as entertaining as Maloney. I guess there's not a lot you can do in half an hour but, yes, it would have been nice to hear more mentioned about Australian crime.

For me, I'm just chuffed that the show was even aired. I've never seen that kind of coverage on my favourite genre in our sunburnt land before!

[Karen from AustCrime]

Whilst I agree Daniel - at least we got a mention! it was still a pretty poor effort and I agree with Lindy on the incredibly poor standard of the discussion and I mourn the missed opportunity.

Even for a half hour show there was very little illumination on the breadth of the work, or even much about where the local scene is going or could go.

Whilst I love Dorothy's work and I thought El Dorado was a fantastic book - why not also look to some of the multi-published / known as Crime Fiction authors - such as Kerrie Greenwood or Gabrielle Lord or Marele Day.

Lindy - I think we all need to band together and hit Aurora or Channel 31!

We're running some commentary over on AustCrime at the moment http://www.austcrimefiction.org/node/4223 and we'll let the show producers know.

[Rose Mercer]

Hi Lindy, I didn't know you were here too! Yes, I watched the show and I was so disappointed with the content. And so male oriented (yes I know Dorothy was there) in so many ways. Darn it, I thought SinC had made more inroads than that. Catch you at the next SinC do....Rose :)

[Lindy Cameron]

Had we been asked Rose, we would've given more than our 20 cents worth.
In fact - if you check out the comments being left on the ABC site itself re this show - you'll see that last year, when the show was just hinted at being forthcoming, 'someone' said Sue Turnbull would be perfect for it!!