Adrian Hyland was born in the Western District of Victoria, then downgraded to the Western suburbs of Melbourne. He studied literature and languages at Melbourne University. Lived in Central Australia, working with First Nations people, for ten years. He also spent a couple of years in China. Adrian currently live on a bush block in St Andrews, in the foothills of the Kinglake Ranges, and is married with two kids. His new book is a small town crime thriller novel called Canticle Creek.
Today, Adrian Hyland is on the blog to answer a few of our questions about his new novel and his writing life. Read on …
Adrian Hyland (Photo by Morgan Brown).
Please tell us about your book, Canticle Creek!
AH: Canticle Creek tells the story of Jesse Redpath, a young policewoman from Central Australia who gets caught up in a murder investigation in rural Victoria. Jesse discovers a divided community and runs up against a range of suspicious characters, from drug dealers and timber thieves to possibly bent coppers. Even the local greenies are a suspicious lot.
Where did the inspiration for this novel come from?
AH: Living in small towns is a source of inspiration for everything I write. It broadens your imagination. You get to see humanity up close and are forced to interact with people of every description in a way you just wouldn’t do in your garret in Carlton or Balmain. It also means you are never far from nature, with all of its terrible beauty.
The detective figure of your novel is a woman named Jesse Redpath. What was your favourite thing about creating her character and story?
AH: Discovering her wit. She’s got a motormouth and a deadly roundhouse kick. One early reader described her as ‘a Crocodile Dundee for our times’, which amused me.
Your novel takes place in the rural town of Canticle Creek during a sweltering hot summer. What is it about the combination of summer and a small town setting that is so irresistible to you as a crime writer?
AH: Those heat waves are when things explode: people, houses, vaporizing eucalyptus oil. They’re perfect fodder for a crime writer. I should also mention that I’ve been a volunteer firefighter for over ten years, and have seen summer at its most lethal. Those fires have scarred my imagination – and the worst is yet to come.
‘Living in small towns is a source of inspiration for everything I write. It broadens your imagination.’
What was the most challenging thing about writing Canticle Creek?
AH: Trying to corral a range of eccentric characters into a coherent narrative. Trying to strike that delicate balance between concealing and revealing the villain – you don’t want to make it too obvious, but nor do you want your reader going: ‘Huh? It was the bloke on page 34?’.
Can you tell us a little bit about your journey towards becoming a writer?
AH: Always loved literature, playing with words. Took fifty years to write my first book. Have been picking up the pace since then.
What do you love about writing crime fiction?
AH: I tried to write other things for years — literary fiction, poetry, songs. It was deciding to write a crime novel that saved me, really. What I love about the genre is that it forces you into a structure — you have to have a beginning and an end, a death and a sprinkling of clues. That sounds like a restriction, but it’s not. There’s still room for a wealth of colour, creativity, wit and inspiration within the bounds of that structure. Some of the greatest modern writers — Peter Temple, Raymond Chandler — found their voice in crime fiction.
What is the last book you read and loved?
AH: For some reason, I’d never got around to reading Les Misérables until a year or two ago. Put off by the schmaltzy musical, I suppose. Whatever the reason, I absolutely adored this book. I started reading it to improve my French, but found it so gripping, I threw my French copy away and read a translation. It was meandering, sentimental, full of coincidences and discussions of the Parisian sewerage system — all the things a crime writer should avoid (maybe not the sewerage). But I fell in love with it. Jean Valjean is my second favourite character in literature. My favourite, of course, is Rosalind, in As You Like It.
What do you hope readers will discover in Canticle Creek?
AH: A classic whodunnit – shot through with intriguing, believable characters and moments of wit, excitement and beauty.
And finally, what’s up next for you?
AH: Another Jesse Redpath novel.
Thanks Adrian!
—Canticle Creek by Adrian Hyland (Ultimo Press) is out now.
Canticle Creek
Two bodies. One long hot summer. A town that will never be the same.
When Adam Lawson's wrecked car is found a kilometre from Daisy Baker’s body, the whole town assumes it’s an open and shut case. But Jesse Redpath isn’t from Canticle Creek. Where she comes from, the truth often hides in plain sight, but only if you know where to look. When Jesse starts to ask awkward questions, she uncovers a town full of contradictions and a cast of characters with dark pasts, secrets to hide and even more to lose...
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