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Emma Rusher: How do you talk about a new crime audiobook without spoilers? Our guest today nailed it. I'm Emma Rusher, and this is Editors Select. Vikki, thank you so much for coming into Audible today. We are thrilled to have you here.
Vikki Petraitis: I'm very thrilled to be here.
I want to get straight into it for our listeners. What was the first crime story that completely hooked you?
The first crime story that completely hooked me was the abduction of Eloise Worledge back in the early '70s, when I was a child. Her face is so iconic. I think there was an anniversary recently. It might have been the 50th anniversary. And just that little face, when you see it, it's Eloise. Everybody knows that face, just like everybody knows the Beaumont children.
And Daniel Morcombe.
And Daniel Morcombe. These little faces are so iconic.
You write fiction, which we're going to get into in a minute. But you're also a true crime queen. You started crime writing way back in the '90s, and it sounded like it was kind of wilder times. I heard you used to do police ride-alongs. You were flying in police choppers. Is that right? Was it kind of a true crime writer's dream era?
I think it was the dream era, because back when I started, there was Tom Noble's Untold Violence and there was Andrew Rule's Cuckoo, but there really wasn't any true crime book that was set in Melbourne. So I think I was a bit of a novelty.
I think it first happened when Peter Falconio went missing and Bradley John Murdoch was charged and went to trial. Within about a month of his conviction, there were four books out. But rewind just a couple of years, you wouldn't have a bunch of books out. When I wrote The Frankston Murders book—it came out in ‘95—it was just such a novelty.
Back then I could ring police, like the rape squad or the drug squad, and say, "Hi, I'm an author. I'm writing a book on different police stories. Can I come in and talk to someone?" And they'd go, "All right." So, I approached the air wing, and when I was doing an interview with one of the police observers, he's trying to explain the helicopter and he goes, "You really need to fly with us to see what it's like." And I went, "All right, if I have to."
One of the best nights of my life was flying around Melbourne on patrol in the police helicopter. It was extraordinary. I had all of these experiences that I don't think you would have now. I don't think you would get to go on patrol. I went on patrol with the accident investigation squad, and at that time, the only jobs they got called out to were fatals. I knew that if we got a call, there would be somebody deceased at the end of that call.
I was a primary teacher by day, and going out on these kind of calls at night was confronting in the way that I just don't think we know what the world is like until we see it from the back of a police car.
"I was a primary teacher by day, and going out on these kind of calls at night was confronting in the way that I just don't think we know what the world is like until we see it from the back of a police car."
It sounds like what you mentioned before—the world has teeth all of a sudden in those experiences. What a contrast to being a primary school teacher.
Skipping around the schoolyard, and then at night I might be at a fatal collision. Or as happened when I was doing shifts with the Frankston police to write a story about what a night shift might look like in Frankston, and ended up at the scene of the third victim of the Frankston serial killer in the back of a police car. You can see the police helicopter shining the night sun down, and I'm just thinking, “I have to write this book.”
That was my big breakout book, because it was a bestseller within a couple of months, and I couldn't get a publisher for it. That was how risk-averse publishers were. My favourite rejection letter ever was from Penguin: "We don't do that kind of thing, but good luck finding someone who would." And by that time, I had actually self-published, and that rejection arrived the same day it made number two on The Age top-ten bestsellers. “No, Penguin. I didn't get anyone to publish it. I did it myself, and it's doing really well.”
On the strength of the success of Frankston, someone I knew had written a true crime book on another local crime, and he got a publisher straight away. The first print run was 10,000. Part of that was kind of backing myself and saying, "Well, I know it'll sell." But I took a bank loan of $20,000 and I had to sell 2,300 copies to pay back that loan. Back in the early '90s, that was a lot of money.
I was going to say, that's a significant investment.
We sold 5,000 in the first three weeks. So, it turned out people did want to read the bigger story, not just the headlines. A lot of my career has been about stepping into a space that didn't exist, or creating a space. I wasn't focused on success, but I didn't ever imagine that I would fail, if that makes sense.
You just did it.
I just did it. I rolled up my sleeves and just kept writing and kept producing these stories. I didn't ever worry about what it would sell or who would read it, just "That's the story I need to be writing." And every story led to the next story. But yeah, flying in police helicopters and going on shifts with police was a big part of that.
Let's bring listeners into the now. For those who aren't familiar, could you tell us a little bit about Antigone Pollard and The Reckoning?
So, Antigone Pollard in the first two books was quite solitary, and in The Stolen, the second book, I started to populate her world with people that she could care about and who would care about her. So, it stood to reason that in The Reckoning, some of them might be in jeopardy, because I think it raises the stakes when people you love need your help.
It starts out with the premise—and this is really early on, so I don't think it's a spoiler—that two of the men convicted of drink spiking who got off on the sexual assault charges are released from prison. To make matters worse, they're coming home on Australia Day and they're going to be given a hero's welcome at the Australia Day cricket match. Something happens to really interfere with their hero's welcome that puts them in jeopardy. And then it all goes downhill from there.
What do you hope listeners will take from The Reckoning?
What I like to focus on in the fiction is the stories about what it's like to maybe be in a siege, just what that's like from the other point of view. A regular citizen has to become an expert and a negotiator when they find themselves in that kind of situation. I also have continued a character that I love writing about, Drew Nayle. He's kind of a right-wing radio commentator who's horrible. Sometimes when I'm proofing sections that he's in, I just go, "He's so horrible." And I love creating that horrible character.
He's great to read.
I love it. He's so typical of what you might hear. There's a particular person I go to for horrible quotes, because they're out there. I also go to social media, the manosphere. They'll jump on things and just be awful. I have this recurring character, Wayne from Chelsea, who rings in a lot, and Wayne from Chelsea typifies those kind of people.
I just want people to think about how the media portrays something that they're watching in real time, but then they're seeing the portrayal of it that's completely skewed, which is often the case.
I think that's what works so well in The Reckoning. You give us the inside story of what's really happening, take us to the moments, the rooms, the situations, and then you juxtapose it with this radio jock coming on and trying to create a clickbait sort of story. It's a really great device. It's fantastic to listen to as well in audio, his radio show.
It is fun to write. Over the three books he becomes someone that people are fond of because they love to hate him. I love writing that character.
"I wasn't focused on success, but I didn't ever imagine that I would fail."
Our Audible listeners love hearing from authors reading their own words. I hear you've picked a section for us to enjoy today. Take it away, Vikki.
Yes. So, just in the lead-up to this section, Antigone is walking at night and she's walking down an alleyway from a restaurant to get to her car. When she walks down the alleyway, she encounters a group of men. She hopes that they'll just ignore her and let her pass. And they don't. She says, "Have a nice night," and they start to surround her.
I hoped this would end the encounter, but there's always one idiot hopped up on something who thinks he's a hero. Or maybe just a guy who can't stand the shift in the balance of power. This time it was the one in the white singlet. While the others retreated, he rushed towards me.
I saw him coming, saw the hatred, the twisted concentration. Like I had to be humiliated or annihilated. He spread his arms wide, intending to grab me. In a split-second calculation, I pivoted and landed a sidekick to his groin, just as Waffles took a flying leap and sunk his teeth into the man's arm. The guy screamed and dropped to the ground with a dull thud.
"Release," I cried the moment I ascertained the man was no longer a threat. Waffles released the arm and returned to my side.
"Jesus," said the guy in the red shirt. "He's bleeding." He moved towards his groaning mate, and Waffles ran up to him and barked. The guy stopped and raised his hands in surrender.
"Do I need to call the police?" I said menacingly, reaching into my back pocket and pulling out my phone.
"No, no, no. We don't want any trouble," said the guy in the red shirt.
"Neither did I," I said. "Neither did I."
Waffles returned to my side. He was quiet now, sensing their retreat. We didn't walk around them. We walked straight toward them, and they parted like the Red Sea.
That's fabulous, and a great insight into Antigone Pollard, the heroine of The Reckoning and this series. She's so real and authentic. Speaking of your characters, there's Antigone Pollard, and then there is Senior Detective Constable Wozza. When you were writing Wozza, did you anticipate how much we all love him as our work husband?
Look, I suspected. And this is funny, because I had Peter Helliar in mind, the comedian Peter Helliar, who's an ally for women. He has three daughters and his wife, who's lovely. I didn't want any kind of competition between her and Antigone, but Wozza loves cake and he can get a little bit snarky with other people.
As a character, I was very conscious of having him because there are a lot of bad guys. In author interviews, sometimes you get asked, "Do you hate men because you've got bad guys?" So now when I interview male authors, I go, "So, you've got bad guys. Do you hate men?" And they always go, "What?" And I go, "Well, I get asked that, so I'm passing that on."
I was very conscious that I needed to create a man who was an ally and a good guy and protective of all the women, because I think it's easy as a crime writer to write bad guys. We need to write the good guys.
I do love how every time in The Reckoning food appears, Wozza is very delighted. He really does love his food.
Wozza's tummy rumbles a lot, doesn't it? I saw an interview with Alexander McCall Smith once and he said, "Whenever I don't know what to write next, they just have a cup of tea." Now, in The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, they have a lot of tea.
Countless teas.
So, I think as a device they have cake a lot. And tea is a big thing because I drink a lot of tea. I'm projecting, aren't I?
"I think it's easy as a crime writer to write bad guys. We need to write the good guys."
The Reckoning's plot is so current. There are echoes of the mushroom murders. There's the consent issue, and there's a small town on the edge. Do you watch unfolding events as they're happening and think, "Wait, is that real?" And does that ever feel predatory in a way, as a crime novelist?
I think we are all bombarded with everything that's happening all the time. As a crime writer, you're like a sponge. But what I tend to do is base reactions on people that I've interviewed. I did this podcast called The Unthinkable with Emily Webb from Australian True Crime podcast, and we interviewed people who had been through an unthinkable event to ask them how they survived and thrived.
Two of the people we interviewed: one was Louisa Hope from the Lindt Cafe siege, who is the most awesome person I've ever met. And another was Ben Besant, who wrote Tiger, Tiger, Tiger, and he was one of the tactical operatives outside of Lindt. So, we had interviewed someone from the outside and someone from the inside. We spent three days with them and they were just—it opens your eyes to what happens in a siege and what the experience is; the tactical police wanting to go in, but they can't, and then the people on the inside going, "Why aren't they coming in?"
I was fixated on that idea. What if we raise the stakes and Antigone faced people that she really loved who were in jeopardy in that way? I'm also fascinated with the way that in Lindt, the terrorist wouldn't talk to police, so there's no room for negotiation. The people who are hostages have to be the negotiators. You have to take all of the skills that you've ever learned, and you have to try and placate and calm down. All of these things that negotiators spend years learning how to do, they have to just do it live. And I thought, who better? The characters that I have involved in that are great at it just because they're naturally good people.
Let's move on to you as a writer. We have seen images of your beautiful crime library stash at home—floor-to-ceiling wooden bookshelves, beautiful golden-yellow wall. What book might you suggest you pluck next that our listeners might enjoy?
See, this is funny. When you write in the true crime genre, I listen to fiction.
What would you recommend?
My first favourite would be Hannah Kent's Burial Rites. Because it has a lot of Icelandic terminology, when you listen to that being read, it's beautiful. Whereas I imagine if you were reading it on the page, you might stumble. So, when they talk about the surname of the character Magnúsdóttir, if you don't know how to pronounce that, it's so beautiful [when narrated].
My second favourite, and I've listened to this several times, is Ian McEwan's Nutshell. It's narrated by Rory Kinnear, who's an actor. He's in The Diplomat. He plays the prime minister. And when I was watching that, I'm going, "That voice. That's Nutshell. That's the guy that does Nutshell." I love it because he's narrating as an unborn baby and he sounds haughty.
I've listened to all the Harry Potters with Stephen Fry a bunch of times. When crime becomes too heavy, I'll do that. And another series I've listened to a bunch of times is Crazy Rich Asians.
I love that so much.
It's just light. Because when you're dealing with the things that I deal with, sometimes you just need light.
Speaking of light, let's shift to a darker listen. I personally am a daytime-only thriller and crime listener. I can't do after dark. Do you have any rules about when you read or listen to crime?
I don't, because I listen to audiobooks from the minute I get up in the morning. The first thing I do: I get out of bed and put them on my iPad. I listen to them in the shower and putting makeup on. I'm listening to audiobooks all the time.
But at the same time, I read two or three books at once. So, if a book gets a bit too heavy, I'll just go, "I'm going to go to that lighter one." I read a lot of funny fiction. One I'm listening to at the moment is The Model Murder, which is Amanda Hampson's maybe fourth one of her series The Tea Ladies. That's lovely. I love Anthony Horowitz's Hawthorne series. That's just hilarious. So, I do listen to a lot of light ones.
I like imagining you listening to your light listens while you're delving into these really dark crime stories. What can listeners look forward to from Vikki Petraitis next?
I had a book out earlier this year, The Vanishing of Vivienne Cameron, which was the culmination of 35 years of true crime, looking at this particular case. I narrated that audiobook. I've never done that before. And what we did for that book is we put a podcast episode at the end of it. I'd done the podcast on The Vanishing of Vivienne Cameron, and so we put sort of episode 11 at the end of the audiobook.
I don't know if it's been done before, but part of what we do is being a bit inventive and just saying, "Well, that'd be cool to give an audio listener a podcast episode." And we did it. I was really excited about that.
And of course, The Reckoning will be narrated by Maria Angelico. I love her, because when The Unbelieved came out, they said, "Have you got an audio narrator?" I had to switch from a listener to, "Okay, well, who do I like?" I had just listened to Debra Oswald's The Family Doctor, and I loved the narrator. I googled who that was and it was Maria Angelico. I said, "I want her." She just hits the right note. I was delighted she was able to do it.
She does a fabulous job.
I love her so much. It was funny, because I didn't know what she looked like. Then I saw her. She played a role in Sally Hepworth's, I think The Family Next Door maybe. I thought, "That voice!" I recognised it. Then I googled it and went, "That's her!"
And there's an exciting TV series coming up for you.
Yes! I can talk about it now, because for the first couple of years you can't say anything. When The Unbelieved came out in August of 2022, toward the end of the year, a movie producer walked into a bookstore on the Gold Coast. He was from the UK, and he bought the book and read it and went, "Oh, my God, this is exactly what we've been looking for."
He was working at that time with Anna Torv, the actor, and he said to her, "Have a read." And she went, "Oh, my God, I want to play that character." Her director who directs her in a lot of stuff is Emma Freeman. Emma Freeman read it and went, "I want to direct that." The dominoes fell, and this kind of thing normally takes a really long time. But because we had Anna and Emma on board, and the TV production company was Moon River, who'd done Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris and A Gentleman in Moscow, they had a lot of really big runs on the board. The Australian arm of that, Soapbox, came on board, and then I found myself being an extra in the TV show.
How fun! Hitchcock did that.
I hope I don't end up on the cutting room floor, but my husband and my grandkids and my brother and sister-in-law, we just kind of walk past the camera and try to look natural, like we're not going to be on TV. That was just the most amazing day. Then, finally, the ABC announced that it was coming out so we could talk about it.
So, it's coming soon?
Yes. We don't have a date yet, but later this year.
Is it coming on the BBC?
ABC, BBC, and then I think it will be on the German national broadcaster. And hopefully you'll be able to watch it around the world.
Going international! Well, that is fabulous for you. Congratulations. It's a huge feat. We are so excited to have you in the studio today for The Reckoning and all the very best with its release. As you meet and delight fans around the world, please do come back and visit us next time.
I would love to come back. Maybe for book 4.
Yes, absolutely. I want to know what Antigone is up to next.
I think everybody does.
We hope you enjoyed today's Editors Select. To hear more from the authors you love, head over to the Audible blog for the latest interviews with authors from around the world. Meantime, once Vikki Petraitis takes you on a ride-along in The Reckoning, trust me, you will not want to stop running, commuting, or whatever it is you do when you listen to Audible.
