Michael Robotham is sitting in what he calls The Cabana Of Cruelty.
asserted
he → sit → Cruelty
But from where I sit, it looks idyllic – a writing cabin with big windows, a comfy couch and a number of bookshelves, in the backyard of Robotham’s home in Avalon on Sydney’s northern beaches.
asserted
it → sit → beaches
The author’s 20th crime novel is about to take up space on those bookshelves.
asserted
novel → take → bookshelves
And it has an unusual backstory.
asserted
it → have → backstory
Robotham, who is 65, wrote an early version of it in his twenties.
asserted
who → write → twenties
Back then he was a journalist, initially on The Sun in Sydney, where he was one of 16 teenagers out of 10,000 applicants to land a cadetship, then The Sydney Morning Herald, before moving to England in the mid-80s to write for The Mail On Sunday.
asserted
he → land → Sunday
“It was one of the most successful newspapers in the UK, and they had the money to send you anywhere in the world,” he says.
asserted
he → have → world
“I remember a time where I was away from home for three months because they were bouncing me between countries doing different stories.
asserted
they → remember → stories
I was there when Nelson Mandela was released, and the fall of the Berlin Wall, and I was the first Western journalist to get access to the Moscow State Archives.
asserted
I → release → Archives
I count myself very lucky.”
When he was 28, an agent contacted him to gauge his interest in writing a book, and Robotham told him about the novel he’d been working on since he was 22.
asserted
he → count → novel
had the working title Blessed Are The Meek.
asserted
Blessed → have → title
The agent tried to sell it, and it was almost picked up by esteemed English publishing house Heinemann, but lost out by a single vote at the acquisitions meeting.
asserted
it → try → meeting
“They told us that if it had been set in England, Ireland, Scotland or Wales, they would have said yes, but because it was set in a small town in Australia, it was very difficult for them to market.
asserted
them → tell → Australia
This was in 1988, and obviously now authors such as Jane Harper and Liane Moriarty have completely changed that situation.
asserted
authors → change → situation
So he put the book in the bottom drawer, and that’s where it stayed for almost four decades.
asserted
it → put → decades
He had other fish to fry, leaving journalism to become a successful ghostwriter of celebrity memoirs, including books by Geri Halliwell, Lulu, actor Ricky Tomlinson, forensic psychologist Paul Britton and yachtsman Tony Bullimore.
asserted
He → have → Halliwell
He also wrote Rolf Harris’s autobiography, before the revelations emerged about the entertainer’s sexual abuse of underage girls, “but that’s one I don’t really like talking about after what happened.
asserted
what → write → girls
I have all my ghostwritten books on display on a shelf, but that one’s not there any more.”
asserted
one → have → shelf
Robotham’s third act arrived in 2002, when a partial manuscript of his novel The Suspect, the first of a series of nine books featuring psychologist Joe O’Loughlin, was the subject of a bidding war at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
asserted
manuscript → arrive → Fair
It has since sold over a million copies, has been translated into 25 languages, was adapted into a TV series, and set him on a new career as a crime writer.
asserted
It → sell → writer
So when it came time to write his 20th novel, after a lifetime of setting his books anywhere but Australia, he thought it was time to dust off the manuscript in the bottom drawer.
asserted
it → come → drawer
Was he surprised by what he found when he re-read it?
asserted
he → surprise → it
“There were some sections where I cringed and thought ‘That’s a bit self-indulgent’ or ‘That’s a bit naive’.
asserted
That → be → ?
And I can see my influences.
asserted
I → see → influences
“But I have to say, in many parts of it I was thinking, ‘Shit, that 22-year-old could really write!’
uncertain
old → have → it
Of course, I rewrote it because I think I’ve hopefully learned a few things about writing now I’m in my sixties.
asserted
I → rewrite → sixties
But the story and the characters have not changed since I wrote them all those years ago.”
asserted
I → change → them
He also points out with a wry laugh that this was all pre-computer, so that original manuscript was bashed out on a Remington typewriter.
asserted
manuscript → point → typewriter
The novel is now called Tell Me Something True.
asserted
novel → call → Something
It’s the story of Arlo Hackett, who has just finished a 12-year stretch in jail as an accomplice to rape and murder in the late 1980s.
asserted
who → ’ → 1980s
He returns to his hometown of Yulara, a dot on the map halfway between Sydney and Melbourne, and faces the ghosts of the past and the prejudices of the present, as he tries to get to the truth of what really happened all those years ago, when a girl he cared for was killed, his autistic younger brother was accused of the murder, and his life went off the rails.
asserted
life → return → rails
Robotham grew up in Gundagai, and adds “anyone who lives there will easily recognise the town as the basis for Yulara”.
asserted
who → grow → Yulara
At one point Arlo says, “small towns have big memories.”
asserted
towns → say → memories
“Well, let me tell you a story,” he says.
asserted
he → let → story
“Some years ago I did a book event in Wagga, which is only about 80 kilometres from Gundagai.
asserted
which → do → Gundagai
And I told a story about when I was six years old and lit a campfire in the backyard of our house.
asserted
I → tell → house
It got completely out of control and the first house it threatened belonged to the head of the Gundagai Rural Fire Brigade.
asserted
it → get → Brigade
I crawled under our house to hide and heard the sirens, and in my head the entire town was going to burn down.
asserted
town → crawl → head
After my talk, people came up to me to say they lived in Gundagai, and they clearly remembered that fire.
asserted
they → come → fire
A couple of years after the fire incident he and a friend hung signs around their necks saying that they were blind and stood outside the town’s Niagara Cafe, begging for money.
asserted
they → hang → money
…and 25 more, not listed.
The Aporia
