Photos: Supplied.
Award-winning Chris Hammer is a leading Australian crime fiction novelist. His distinctive style and the wealth of experience he brings to his stories have propelled his book sales to over 1.5 million copies worldwide.
Chris has worked nationally and internationally as a journalist and foreign correspondent in 30 countries and six continents, including working with SBS on the esteemed current affairs program Dateline.
“I was never a war correspondent, but I have worked in conflict zones: Cambodia towards the end of the Khmer Rouge regime, in Bosnia in the aftermath of the war and in Gaza after Hamas took over. The Israelis at that time were shelling, and there were some F-14 strikes, but nothing like what’s been happening in the last couple of years.”
Chris says that while he has been lucky to escape post-traumatic stress, he has journalistic friends who live with symptoms of it.
“Martin Scarsden, one of my main characters from my first crime series Scrublands, is loosely based on some of those journalists and photographers. A bit like some of our special forces in Afghanistan, after a few tours of duty some war correspondents find it really hard to reintegrate into a peaceful society; they’re addicted to the rush so they sign up for another tour. I was never that character, but my books tap into those experiences.”
Appropriately for a former environmental journalist and writer, weather and environment play a central role in Chris’ narratives, like silent, unlisted actors or an orchestral basso continuo. Chris exhibits masterly control of complex, multi-layered plots, weaving together the concomitant impacts of history, environment, the politics of power, self-interest and status. But it would be a mistake to assume that the story is micro-managed from the beginning.
“I don’t plot the books out. I’ve tried doing that, and it doesn’t work; the characters may take me somewhere else, or I may get a better idea. Until the first draft is done, I really don’t know where it’s going. Crime writers are either plotters or ‘pantsers’; plotters plan everything out so they know exactly where they’re going, ‘pantsers’ write by the seat of their pants.”
Chris will be promoting his latest book, Full Circle, in October in the Redlands.
As well as events at the Lamb Island Storyteller Festival on the October long weekend, Chris will give an author talk at Cleveland Library at 10:00am on Wednesday, October 7.
“Full Circle is a stand-alone story with new characters, set in the very wealthy Victorian enclave of Sorrento; the crimes are related to wealthy people and succession issues, financial malfeasance and stock market manipulation. I think my readers will enjoy it.” Based on past experience, that’s very likely.
