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Sixty seconds with Michael Robotham...
Aussie writer Michael Robotham worked on newspapers in Australia, Europe, Africa and America before turning to ghost-writing books for celebrities. His three crime fiction novels, including the latest, The Night Ferry, have won or been nominated for a host of awards.
RTE: Describe yourself in a sentence?
Robotham: I am a short, balding, grey-haired, middle-aged leading man, still waiting for Hollywood to call.
RTE: What's the one record you'd take to a desert island?
Robotham: Can I take a talking book? The complete works of Dickens.
RTE: What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Robotham: I wanted to be prison warder because I heard on the radio they were striking for a salary of $50 a week. My pocket money was only 50c. I could do the maths.
RTE: Who's your oldest friend?
Robotham: Alpheus Williams, a mentor and a mate. At school he inspired me to read classic American literature like Steinbeck and Hemingway. Later he was best man at my wedding, godfather to my eldest daughter and my latest book THE NIGHT FERRY is dedicated to him.
RTE: If I ruled the world...
Robotham: We’d be in big big trouble. I can’t balance a chequebook, I spend more than I earn and I’m a sucker for a pretty face and a sob story. Maybe I’d just put Prozac in the water supply and retire to my island.
RTE: Which book do you wish you'd written?
Robotham: The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald. (I think I secretly did write this book in another life, but the idea was stolen by Francis Scott while I was dancing with a flapper at the speakeasy).
RTE: What makes you angry?
Robotham: America’s gun control laws. What gun control laws? Exactly.
RTE: Name your five dream dinner party guests.
Robotham: I was going to choose the architects of the Iraq war and poison them with my entrée of puffer fish, but have decided to choose writers instead: Hemingway for his swashbuckling stories, Steinbeck for his angry themes, Graham Greene for his pitch perfect irony, Mark Twain for his humour and my agent Mark Lucas so we can share the memories.
RTE: Who would you least like to be stuck in a lift with?
Robotham: Tom Cruise. Need I say more?
RTE: What inspired you to start writing?
Robotham: I was inspired to write not by the best books I ever read but by those that could have been better. That’s the beauty of being a writer and also the burden. We cannot read without taking the prose apart and seeing how it was put together. The really great books don’t have joins or moving parts. They’re seamless and perfect.
RTE: Where would you most like to live?
Robotham: On Sydney’s northern beaches, a few minutes from the surf, watching my three daughters grow up. Hey, I’m here! For God’s sake, don’t wake me up.
RTE: Sum up your latest book in no more than 12 words.
Robotham: Val McDermid said it beautifully: "Heart-stopping, heart-breaking and heart-wrenching."
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