Tag Archives: Andrew Nette

My year in books: Margot Kinberg

Posted on December 4, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 31 Comments

For the second instalment of my year in books series, I’m very happy to welcome Margot Kinberg. Margot is one of those people who make the crime fiction community such a cool place to hang out in, a mystery novelist who has a genuine passion for reading, writing and talking about crime fiction. She has a wonderful website, Confessions of Mystery Novelist. It’s full of thoughtful reviews and features on a truly eclectic selection of crime fiction. You can check it out here.

Welcome Margot.

Thanks very much for hosting me, Andrew; it’s a real honour. I’ve been asked to share my five best crime fiction reads of 2013 and to tell the truth, that’s quite a difficult undertaking. I’ve read some fantastic crime fiction this year and it’s very hard to narrow it down to just five novels. Let’s say, then, that these are five novels that have had a profound impact on me. Here they are in no particular order:

Witness the Night, Kishwar Desai

This astounding debut novel tells the story of the murders of thirteen members of the wealthy Atwal family, and the efforts of one social worker to find out what happened on the night they died. It’s an unflinching look at life in Punjab, at the choices people make and why they make them, and at the effects of class, wealth and prejudice.… Read more

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Posted in Crime fiction, Noir fiction

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Beat to a Pulp Hardboiled 3 is live

Posted on November 24, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 2 Comments

Harboiled

I can’t think of a better way to finish 2013, than to have a story in a new anthology of crime fiction, Beat to a Pulp Hardboiled 3.

For those of you not familiar with it, Beat to a Pulp is an awesome little (although it seems to be expanding each time I look) US operation run by hardboiled crime fiction enthusiast, editor and all round gent, David Cranmer.

It features regular short crime fiction by some of the coolest writers around. David’s also increasingly active publishing his books and novellas under the Beat to a Pulp imprint.

If this sounds like your kind of thing, add it to your bookmarks because it’s a great site.

Anyway, for the last three years running, David has collected the best of the fiction appearing in Beat to a Pulp and released it as an anthology.

I have a story in the latest anthology, Beat to a Pulp Hardboiled 3. ‘One Ashore in Singapore’ features my character Gary Chance, formerly of the Australian army and now a professional criminal. It’s a down and dirty tale of false identities, double dealings and the challenges of finding late night accommodation.

It’s my chance to play with some of the big girls and boys of the US hardboiled crime fiction scene – Patti Abbott, Hilary Davidson, Chris F Holm, Kieran Shea, Josh Stallings, Sophie Littlefield, Keith Rawson, and Fred Blosser.… Read more

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Posted in Crime fiction, Noir fiction

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Pulp Curry added to National Library of Australia’s web archive

Posted on April 21, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 1 Comment

FUCK UR BLOG

In a sign of just how much Australia’s culture is on the skids, this site, Pulp Curry, is to be added in the National Library of Australia’s PANDORA Archive.

PANDORA is the National Library e-archive dedicated to enabling the long term preservation of online publications to ensure Australians have access to their documentary heritage now and in the future.

It’s a wonderful honour for my site to be included on the PANDORA Archive. I also get a thrill out of the fact that future generations will be able to check out my musings on Australian and international crime fiction and film, obscure pulp novels and associated topics.

For some reason, it reminds me of that scene from one of my favourite seventies dystopian science fiction films, Rollerball, when Jonathan E visits the super computer Zero to try and find out more about the corporations running the planet.

This is what he finds:

Photo credit: Angela Savage… Read more

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Posted in Australian crime fiction, Australian crime film, Australian pulp fiction

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Fact and fiction in criminal case file 002

Posted on March 17, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 3 Comments

Ieng Sary Hearing 1

Late last week Ieng Sary aka criminal case file 002, former foreign minister for the charnel house known as the Khmer Rouge regime, died in Phnom Penh at the age of eighty seven.

One of five senior members of the Khmer Rouge being investigated by an international tribunal, Sary died denying he had any role in overseeing the death by starvation, torture and murder of approximately 1.7 million Cambodians between 1975 and early 1979.

Unfortunately, he escaped justice, dying before the tribunal could hand down its findings into his case.

Described in the charge sheet as ‘retired’, he lived peacefully in the former guerilla strong hold of Pailin until 2007, when an ageing Soviet-era chopper swooped down and police arrested and bundled him off to Phnom Penh.

For me, the news of the 87-year-old Sary’s death was very much a case of fact and fiction merging.  Sary’s defection from the Khmer Rouge in 1996 forms the historical backdrop of my crime novel set in Cambodia, Ghost Money.

Normally, I’d feel dreadful using someone’s death as an excuse to plug my book, but I’ll make an exception in Sary’s case.

I was just about to a stint as a journalist with one of the wire services in Phnom Penh, when news of Sary’s defection from the Khmer Rouge broke.… Read more

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Posted in Asian noir, Crime fiction, Crime fiction and film from Cambodia, Snubnose Press

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How I came to write Ghost Money

Posted on September 3, 2012 by Andrew Nette| 5 Comments

I started writing the book that eventually became my debut novel Ghost Money in 1996 when I worked for several months in Cambodia as a wire service journalist.

I’d first travelled to Cambodia in 1992 while living in neighbouring Laos. It was a desperately poor and traumatised country. The Khmer Rouge, responsible for the deaths by starvation and torture of approximately 1.7 million Cambodians during their brief rule in the seventies, were still fighting from heavily fortified jungle bases. The government was an unstable coalition of two parties who’d been at each other’s throats for the better part of a decade and whose main interests were settling historical scores and making money.

Phnom Penh, the crumbling capital of the former French colony, was crawling with foreigners; peacekeepers sent by the West and its allies to enforce peace between the various factions, and their entourage of drop outs, hustlers, pimps, spies, do-gooders and journalists. The streets teemed with Cambodian men in military fatigues missing legs and arms, victims of the landmines strewn across the country. There was no power most of the time. The possible return of the Khmer Rouge caste a shadow over everything.

When the opportunity arose several years later to fill in with one of the wire services, I jumped at it.… Read more

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Posted in Asian noir, Crime fiction, Crime fiction and film from Cambodia, Noir fiction, Snubnose Press

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