Interview with Crime Writer Andrew Nette – S. 4, Ep. 17

Debbi Mack interviews crime writer Andrew Nette on the Crime Cafe podcast. Check out the show notes below. Or, if you’re in a rush, click here to download the transcript! Debbi: [00:00:13] Hi everyone. This is the Crime Cafe, your podcasting source of great crime, suspense, and thriller writing. I'm your host Debbi Mack. Before I bring on my guest, I'll just remind you that the Crime Cafe has two e-books for sale: the nine-book boxed set and the short story anthology. You can find the buy links for both on my website debbimack.com under the "Crime Cafe" link. You can also get a free copy of either book if you become a Patreon supporter. You'll get that and much more, if you support the podcast on Patreon, along with our eternal gratitude for doing so. [00:01:02] Finally, I'd like to tell you about another podcast that might interest you. Kings River Life has a new mystery podcast called Mysteryrat's Maze. Episodes consist of mystery short stories, and first chapters of mystery novels, read by local actors. To listen to the episodes and subscribe to the podcast, you can go to mysteryratsmaze.podbean.com, iTunes and Google Play. Click the icon below to learn more. [00:01:33] Hi, everyone. Today on the Crime Cafe, it's my pleasure to have a writer of fiction, non-fiction, a reviewer, and a self-proclaimed pulp scholar. It's my pleasure, as I said, to introduce Andrew Nette today. Andrew: [00:01:54] Thank you, Debbi. Nice to be here. Debbi: [00:01:58] I'm so happy you can be here. Andrew: [00:02:00] Yes. It took a bit of organizing, but we did it. Debbi: [00:02:03] We did it. We did it. How would you describe your particular type of fiction writing? Andrew: [00:02:13] I think without trying to make it too complicated I like to say that I sort of write elevated sort of genre novels. It's hardboiled fiction with the sort of noir tinge, although I don't think you can call yourself noir. You have to let someone else call you that. But I do try and I do try and put a lot of work into them. I try to make the writing the best I can and I try and inject quite a bit of politics and setting into my into my crime novels. My second novel is called Gunshine State and it's a heist novel. It's a heist gone wrong novel. I love heist movies, and I've always wanted to write that Australian heist gone wrong novel, because there's so few of them. But it's also quite political and it's set in a number of places. It's set in Queensland, which is in northern Australia. It's also set in Melbourne. It's also set in Thailand, where I lived for quite a while. Debbi: [00:03:21] I see. Well, I'm reading it now and enjoying it very much. Can you tell us a little bit about your first novel Ghost Money? Andrew: [00:03:30] Yeah. Ghost Money, a novel dear to my heart. I worked as a journalist in Cambodia in the 1990s for a wire service for a while. I lived in that part of Southeast Asia for about seven years, and I spent quite a bit of time in Cambodia. I always thought Cambodia would be a great setting for a crime novel, partly because things happened every day in Cambodia. You just couldn't make up ... terrible things, but also wonderful things. Also, I'm fascinated by the notion of what constitutes justice and law and order in countries which lack a great deal of justice and law and order and which have had something like the Khmer Rouge that did the horrendous Pol Pot regime happened to them. But when I was working in Cambodia in the 90s, I always thought this would be really great to set a crime novel here. And I never got around to it. I was too busy working as a journalist, and then later on I sort of came back to it. That was in the mid-90s, and then basically in about 2007, my father died and I had this epiphany. I thought I have to write this novel. So my family and I went and lived in Cambodia for a year. And I wrote a novel that's called Ghost Money, which is set in Cambodia in the mid-90s.