Nikki Crutchley – Country Crime Thrillers

Nikki Crutchley is about to publish her third crime mystery novel, set in small town New Zealand.  These are thrillers with beautiful settings and, sadly, an ugly social underbelly, found anywhere, but that’s what crime’s all about, isn’t it? Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler, and today Nikki talks about her latest book, The Murder Club, and the encouragement she draws from other women writers in the mystery field. Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode: Learning how to say ‘Yes’ to opportunity The fascinating dynamic of small town crime Keeping secrets when ‘everyone know everybody’ The darker side of tourism The writers she admires most Honoring hometown heroes Where to find Nikki Crutchley:  Website: https://www.nikkicrutchley.com/ Facebook: @NikkiCrutchleyAuthor Twitter: @Nikkicauthor Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17129077. What follows is a “near as” transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions. But now, here’s Nikki. Introducing Nikki Crutchley Jenny Wheeler: Hello there, Nikki, and welcome to the show, it’s wonderful to have you with us. Tell me, beginning at the beginning, was there a once upon a time moment when you decided you wanted to write fiction and if so, what was the catalyst for it? Nikki Crutchley – Mystery author Nikki Crutchley: I think I always wanted to write. If you asked a seven-year-old Nikki, she would have said, I want to be a writer when I grow up. Between the ages of about 7 and 14, that’s all I ever wanted to do. But as life got in the way, I went to university and went on my OE and got married and had kids and there was always that thought of wanting to write a book one day, but I never really did anything about it. The dream was always there and I don’t know if it was a lack of confidence or a timing issue, but I do remember when my girls were two and four, I started writing fairytales for them and I loved getting back into writing. I printed off a few of the stories and sent them to families and friends and they all loved them, but it wasn’t really what I wanted to be doing. I really wanted to be writing crime. At that time, I also got into writing flash fiction, which is short, short stories, around 300 words or less, and I had a little bit of success with that. I got published in a few New Zealand anthologies, so I think the time was right around there and confidence was a big issue, I think. Jenny Wheeler: Yes. Maybe there’s an issue of having somebody in your world who looks like a reasonable role model too. A lot of the writers were male, as well. Inspired by other women authors Nikki Crutchley: Definitely. Around that time, just as I was getting ready to dive in, I remember reading New Zealand crime writer Vanda Symon’s book, Overkill, and thinking back on it now, that was a small town setting, crime thriller, and it was almost me realizing, oh, maybe I can do that. Jenny Wheeler: Yes. You are about to publish your third crime mystery now, called The Murder Club. We were laughing before we went on air because you live in one of the most beautiful rural towns in New Zealand, the town of Cambridge, which combines the New Zealand rural beauty with a few English buildings that give it a sense of history, and your books are all beautiful settings and a rather ugly social underbelly. What attracted you to crime? Nikki Crutchley: With the crime genre, I quite like how you can explore people in society, which can be quite serious subjects, but still have a little bit of fun with the whodunit aspect. I’ve been reading the crime genre since my mid-teens so when it came to writing a book, I felt like the genre picked me. I’ve always had a fascination with not so much the act of the crime, the violent crime, that’s something that always has to be explored in crime fiction, but also why someone chooses to do something or if they’re pushed to the point of committing a violent crime, why they did it. Small town crime dynamic But you’re right. All three of my novels are set in small town New Zealand. I’ve always lived in small towns. I grew up in a town called Otorohanga, which, when I was a teenager, had a population of about 3000. I quite like the idea of small towns and the dynamic they give a crime novel. There’s the idea that everyone knows everyone, but do they? There’s always gossip and rumor in small towns, you can’t avoid it. That’s something I explored in my first book, Nothing Bad Happens Here. I do like that idea of beautiful settings and something bad happening. I think it’s a really good contrast. Nothing Bad Happens Here – Nikki Crutchley’s first mystery Jenny Wheeler: As we’ve mentioned, you live in New Zealand yourself, but why did you choose to go local with your settings? Do you see the New Zealand location as being an advantage or a disadvantage to getting more international readership? Nikki Crutchley: When I had my first thoughts of Nothing Bad Happens Here, my first novel, the setting came to me first, even before the characters, and the setting was the Coromandel coast of New Zealand, which is a stunning region for people that don’t know it – beautiful beaches and lots of small beachy towns. It’s on the East coast of New Zealand’s North Island. I used to have my summer holidays as a child in a place called Whangamata and a few minutes out of Whangamata is a big expanse of forest called Wentworth Valley. Those two places, where I chose to set Nothing Bad Happens Here, became Coldridge Valley and Castle Bay. Pros and cons of NZ setting I think with the New Zealand setting, it is a double-edged sword. I chose it because it’s familiar to me and it’s always easier to write something that’s familiar to you. But it a double-edged sword. There are people who love reading about a country they’ve never been to before, or maybe don’t know too much about, but there are also people who prefer to stick to the books set in bigger countries like the UK or US. The same goes for New Zealand readers as well. I know there are a lot of Kiwi readers who love books set in their own country, but I think there are just as many that don’t give New Zealand books a chance. Jenny Wheeler: Yes. The Murder Club has just been released and there is a theme that runs through all your books so far, and that’s the awareness of organized exploitation and abuse of women. Every one of them has got this thread of women who are abducted or treated very badly. Is there anything that particularly draws you to that darkness? Nikki Crutchley: When I think back, I don’t really do that on purpose, but I find I write to what’s going on in society today, what I see in the newspapers or what’s being discussed on social media. Unfortunately, when it comes to violent crime, a lot of that is being carried out by men, towards women. Whangamata – favorite holiday place became setting for Nikki’s first book – or something very like it… I like putting myself in the place of the protagonist and dealing with how she’s going to react to something that’s happened to her. I also think that darkness is quite interesting to be honest. Most of us live a pretty straight and narrow kind of life, so I find it fascinating being able to veer off the straight and narrow and delve into the darker side of people, both male and female. The dark side of tourism I watched a Netflix documentary called the Dark Tourist at the beginning of last year when I was just starting The Murder Club. It’s about a journalist, David Farrier, who goes around the world visiting dark tourist spots. The one that caught my eye was, he went to Milwaukee and he went on a Jeffrey Dahmer tour. Jeffrey Dahmer was a serial killer for those who aren’t familiar with him. It was a paid tour and they would visit outside his apartment and various places where he killed people or abducted people. It’s terribly disturbing, but there are a lot of people that find that really interesting. I ended up having a scene in The Murder Club where Miller goes around with a slightly dubious character, Logan, and he’s taking people on true crime tours. Miller ends up asking someone, why does that interest you? and I give that same answer, that veering off the straight and narrow and getting into the mind, or trying to understand why someone would commit a violent crime. No One Can Hear You – Mystery #2 Jenny Wheeler: As we’ve mentioned, you have now got three books to your credit, each one set in a different fictional town. They can certainly be read as standalones; in fact you get the impression that you started out setting each one up with a very separate setting and set of characters. But then in Book Three you brought back the key people who were in Book One, Miller and Kahu, who I loved, Miller the journalist and Kahu the police officer. They are now in a different town, but they are back together. You’ve straddled that thing between doing a series and doing standalones. Can you tell us how that came about? No One Can Hear You – Nikki Crutchley murder mystery Nikki Crutchley: My second book, No One Can Hear You, is an absolute standalone – different town, different characters. I wrote Nothing Bad Happens Here with absolutely no intention of making it a series, but when I think about it, a journalist and a cop relationship is a great recipe for a series. Going in, it was a standalone, but once people started reading Nothing Bad Happens Here, I had a lot of people emailing me and speaking to me and asking what was going to happen with Miller. I think it was mostly on a personal level as they really liked her as a character. She’s an alcoholic and we leave her not in the happiest of circumstances in the first novel. But she’s also going for a promotion and I like the idea that people related to her enough and cared enough to wonder what was going to happen to her. Bringing back Miller and Kahu And to be honest, if it was going to be a struggle thinking up new ideas and plots for another Miller and Kahu book, I wouldn’t have bothered, but as soon as people started talking about it, the ideas came to me very easily. When I first started writing The Murder Club, I wanted to introduce a serial killer, or to be technically correct, a spree killer – someone who kills a number of people in a short amount of time. I thought that would work better in a city so I started writing it with the book set in Hamilton, which is a city quite close to where I live and where I went to university, so I could very easily write about it. Kahu wasn’t going to be in it but at the time of writing an English publisher was looking at Nothing Bad Happens Here and was also interested in some kind of sequel. My agent sent him a synopsis for what was going to become The Murder Club and he quite liked the premise but he wanted the same small town setting as Nothing Bad Happens Here. My agent suggested that I bring back Kahu. I was a good 20,000 words in, so it was a bit stressful, but I moved everything to the small fictional town of Lentford and I brought Kahu who back. Headed for a TV show The publisher didn’t end up taking the books on, but I have to thank him for that guidance as The Murder Club would have been a totally different book if it wasn’t for his advice. When I shifted back to that small town setting, it felt very familiar. I was like, yes, I know how to write this. Jenny Wheeler: Nothing Bad Happens Here, the first book you’ve been mentioning, was a finalist in the Ngaio Marsh awards for best novel. I see it’s also being auctioned, which is very exciting. Tell us about the auctioning and for those who are not familiar with them, explain a bit about the Ngaio Marsh awards. Nikki Crutchley: It was while we were in lockdown in New Zealand, so I think it was late May. I got an email from a TV producer asking if the options were available to buy for Nothing Bad Happens Here, which is amazing news, the best news, very exciting. My agent has taken care of all that and the rights have been sold to a New Zealand producer. It’s a waiting game now. It’s a huge project to take on, waiting on grants and scripts being written and things like that. So it’s a bit of a ‘hurry up and wait’ situation. Ngaio Marsh as a school girl With regard to Ngaio Marsh, for those who don’t know her, she was a New Zealand crime writer and theater director. She was known as one of the Queens of Crime along with Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers. I think she wrote well over 30 novels from the early thirties into the eighties and her books featured Inspector Roderick Alleyn. It’s very apt that our crime awards are named after her and the awards are in their 10th season now, I believe, and I think the winners for this year will be announced in the next month or so. The Ngaio Marsh crime awards Craig Sisterson is a Kiwi currently living in London and he is largely responsible for starting the awards. It’s a great way to draw attention to a genre that in New Zealand isn’t widely known about or given a lot of publicity. Crime novels aren’t really up for any literary awards like that, so it’s nice to have our own awards. Jenny Wheeler: Looking back to the auctioning for a moment, has there been any official release, and can you tell us who this director is? Nikki Crutchley: No, I probably need to keep quiet about that, Jenny, but I’m hoping towards the end of the year there might be a bit more news about that. Jenny Wheeler: Yes, the journalist in me had to ask the question. As you’ve mentioned, the relationship between Miller and Kahu is magnetic. Kahu has his own tragic background that he’s dealing with as well and you’re certainly left with the feeling at the end of The Murder Club that there is more mileage in this relationship. And are we going to see them again? Craig Sisterson – championing NZ mystery genre Nikki Crutchley: I think there’s definitely more mileage in them and yes, you will see them again. I have an idea for a third book and did a loose plot and intended to start writing it, but another idea pushed its way in and I’ve started on something else. It will be set in Lentford again which is where The Murder Club is set. So one day soon, I hope. Jenny Wheeler: There are a lot of options for starting out writers today with so much happening in the indie side of things. You can still search for a traditional publisher if you want to, but you can go indie as well. How did you sort out those things for yourself and do you have a personal preference? Indie versus trad publishing options Nikki Crutchley: The dream was always to get a book deal. I know not all writers want that. I think for me with the indie side of publishing, you’ve written your book, which is a huge effort, and then you need to swap hats and put on more of a business sales hat for the indie publishing side. I’ve done it and I think I’ve done it, to a certain extent, successfully, but it’s not really what I’m built to do. It would be a real delight finishing a manuscript and passing it off to a publisher for them to do the rest of that whole editing, proofreading, distribution part. I’d love to give that to someone else. It’s been a very steep learning curve. I have an agent now, Vicki Marsdon of High Spot Literary and she’s always sending my stuff out. It’s a wait and see what happens, but if it doesn’t happen, I’m happy to keep independently publishing. Ngaio Marsh in later life Jenny Wheeler: Have you been much impacted by this pandemic that the world is dealing with? Nikki Crutchley: I think I have. It was a very uncertain time in New Zealand here for lockdown, six weeks or so I think. From a writing point of view, I did find it quite hard creatively. I didn’t have the focus I needed to write, plus me and my little family live in quite a small house, so I had a husband and two girls who are 10 and 12 at home. Where I normally got quiet time to write while they were at school and work, I suddenly didn’t have that. I don’t have an office. I have a desk in the corner of the lounge, so between my husband on Zoom meetings and homeschooling the girls during that time, any kind of writing went out the window. Jenny Wheeler: I gather you’re about to move house so maybe that’s going to be a thing of the past. Nikki Crutchley: I am and I get my own office, which I’m just off the charts excited about. Life before Nikki became an author Jenny Wheeler: That’s fantastic. Moving to a more general focus away from the specific books, could you tell us something about your life before you started writing fiction and how the things you experienced there might have impacted on your books. Nikki Crutchley: My background is in libraries. I worked in libraries in the UK, Ireland and New Zealand and now I work as a freelance proofreader. English was hands down always my favorite subject in school and I swear I entered the world a bookworm. As I said, from about the age of seven I knew I wanted to be a writer, but as I reached my teens, I wondered, very sensibly I might add, would it be a viable career? I looked at journalism briefly until I realized I would have to talk to and interact with people. I was very shy back then so that was enough to put me off. I went to uni and studied English and Sociology and I went on my OE, and as I said before, I did give up writing, bar keeping a travel journal, but there was always that dream of writing until I came back to it with my girls’ fairy stories. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4kB3aFMu8Y Anne of Green Gables – A girlhood passion I think to be a good writer, you need to be a great reader and that’s definitely something that’s impacted my books. From the very beginning I was reading Anne of Green Gables books when I was 10, 11 years old, Patricia Cornwell’s Scarpetta books, whether it’s historical fiction or crime fiction, I believe that’s absolutely impacted my becoming a writer. I think even growing up in small town New Zealand, that’s had a huge impact on the books I’m writing. Jenny Wheeler: The romance side of things is very strong in New Zealand. We’ve got some very good romance writers and that’s often the path that female writers take when they’re getting started. They do a few romances and then they may go off into mystery or historical. Were you ever drawn to the idea of writing romance? ‘Rather kill’ than write romance Nikki Crutchley: Jenny, to be honest, I’d rather kill someone than write a love scene. In No One Can Hear You, my second book, there’s a very thin romance through it with the main character, but it never goes anywhere. I feel I can write relationships but anything that resembles romance – I take my hat off to romance writers because I think it’s harder to develop that kind of relationship and write those kinds of scenes, compared to killing people. Not my thing. Jenny Wheeler: That’s fantastic. It leaves us with an idea about what sort of person you might be. Nikki Crutchley: My husband’s very lucky. Jenny Wheeler: Tell us what was the best piece of advice you were given as a new writer starting out and what was the worst? Nikki Crutchley: I think the best piece of advice is around advice. There’s so much advice out there about the craft of writing and what to do and what not to do. I remember reading somewhere a few years back that you don’t have to take it all on board, you don’t have to take all of that advice. Best and worst writing advice It’s a really personal journey, writing a book. It’s up to you if you want to write 50 words a day or 2000 words a day. It’s up to you if you want to plan your whole book out from start to finish or dive in headfirst. There’s no right or wrong way to go about it. I think once I realized that I felt a lot better about the whole process because for some time I thought I might be doing something wrong, like there were rules around it, but there isn’t. Jenny Wheeler: Has your process changed as you’ve worked through the books? Are you approaching it in the same way now? Nikki Crutchley: It really has. With Nothing Bad Happens Here there was a lot of stopping and starting because I really didn’t know what I was doing but I did a huge amount of planning. With The Murder Club and the book I’m working on now, I do a bit of loose planning, it’s more like writing out scenes of dialogue or main scenes that are going to move the book along, but apart from that, I do just dive in these days and if you had told me I was going to do that three years ago, I wouldn’t have believed you. I think that’s a confidence in your writing though. Paul Cleave’s The Cleaner – international success for a Christchurch ‘noir’ mystery and one of Nikki’s favorite authors Jenny Wheeler: And the worst bit of advice? Nikki Crutchley: It’s probably not so much about writing but to do with indie publishing. Again, there’s a lot of info floating around out there, which is great, but I remember reading a blog post with people telling indie writers that if they’re publishing their own books, to help get costs down, for example, don’t worry about a proofreader. The secret of your success? I’m a proofreader and I remember thinking, oh no, don’t bother with an editor – just get your friends to read it, or don’t bother with professional book cover designer, stuff like that. I remember thinking, when I made the decision to publish my books, I wanted them to look like any other book in the bookshop and to me that meant spending money on my product. It was from a business standpoint I guess, but it meant surrounding myself with people who could help me. I think you’re doing yourself and your book a disservice by not making it the best it can be and I remember thinking, you only have one debut novel and I wanted it to be as good as it could be. Jenny Wheeler: Is there one thing you’ve done so far more than any other that you think of as the secret for your success? Nikki Crutchley: It’s probably saying ‘Yes’ to everything. I’m like most writers, quite introverted, quite shy, and before I started publishing my books, I used to go to writing events and be in the audience and be amazed at the way writers spoke and read from their work. Part of me used to hope that would be me someday and another part of me thought, thank God I don’t have to do that. When my first book came out and it got a little bit of attention – newspaper articles and being a finalist in the Ngaios – I was invited to writers’ groups or festivals and things like that. The importance of saying ‘Yes’ Over the last three years, I’ve done quite a few events and for the first couple of years I absolutely dreaded it but I said yes to everything, and I think by saying yes it started getting easier, which is great. It definitely exposed me to more people who were getting to know me and wanting to buy my books, so it was definitely a positive thing. Jenny Wheeler: Turning to Nikki as reader, because this is The Joys of Binge Reading and it’s predicated on the idea that people these days read in a similar way to the way they view Netflix. If they find books they like, they then read through that author’s work and they can buy it online at midnight if they choose to. You say you’ve been a passionate reader. Tell us about your reading life. Who are you reading today? What Nikki likes to read Nikki Crutchley: I always talk about Anne of Green Gables. That’s such a bingeable series. I think there are about 10 books in that series, and I read that over a couple of years when I was 10, 11, 12. I loved those books. Then, bit of a change, I got into Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta series in my teens. I read Stephen King and James Patterson, Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, things like that. I was looking at my bookshelf the other day and I’ve got a huge amount of Jodie Picoult books. Jane Harper’s latest mystery – The Survivor Today I would read anything by Jane Harper. She’s written The Dry and Force of Nature which have Aaron Falk as the main protagonist, and she brought out The Lost Man last year. She’s an Australian writer. She’s got one coming out in September and she’s the kind of writer who, I would just buy her book. It doesn’t matter, I don’t care what it’s about, I think she’s amazing. Jenny Wheeler: That’s fantastic. Anyone else at the moment? Nikki Crutchley: I have read pretty much everything by Paul Cleave who’s a New Zealand crime writer and I mentioned Vanda Symon, she’s got a Detective Sam Shephard as her protagonist – they’re both Kiwi writers. Also Craig Sisterson, who I talked about, who started the Ngaio Marsh Awards, has just brought out a book called Southern Cross Crime. It’s a reference guide to all the fantastic Australia and New Zealand crime writers. If anyone is looking for anyone to read, Southern Cross Crime is a great book to see who is available. Jenny Wheeler: That’s great. I noticed that Vanda has been picked up by a British publisher, hasn’t she? Nikki Crutchley: She has, she’s doing amazing. What’s next for Nikki the writer? Jenny Wheeler: What is next for Nikki the writer? Have you got new projects under development? You have mentioned this one that’s not one of the Miller/Kahu series. Nikki Crutchley: We’ve got Nothing Bad Happens Here being auctioned, but that’s a waiting game at the moment. I’m about halfway through the first draft of this fourth novel, and it is a little bit different from the other three have done. I guess you would probably describe it as a psychological thriller. It deals with family secrets, the question of protecting your family against outsiders, even if your family has done something wrong. I step away from the small town community setting that has made up my other three books and I go even smaller. All the action takes place on a pine plantation overlooking the Pacific Ocean, again on the Coromandel Coast where three generations of one family are all living, so it’s quite a closed cast of characters, but I’m really enjoying writing it. Jenny Wheeler: Sounds great. It sounds like it could also be one of those books that’s a bit like Anna Willett, the Australian thriller writer. Her books are set in Australia but they’re very generically vague so it could be anywhere, it could be a California coast, it’s not quite pinned down. Nikki Crutchley: You’re exactly right. That’s what I thought when I was writing it. Maybe a bit more scope for international readers. Where to find Nikki online Jenny Wheeler: Tell us where people can get your books and also where they can connect with you online if they’re interested in doing so. Nikki Crutchley: I think Amazon is the easiest place to go. All my books are available as e-books or print copies.  The Murder Club is out on Monday 31st August, so you can preorder that at the moment. I’m on Facebook as NikkiCrutchleyAuthor, on Twitter as @NikkiCAuthor, I’m on Instagram @nikkicwrites and I have a website, nikkicrutchley.com. Feel free to contact me. I love getting emails from people. Jenny Wheeler: Do you get a lot of response from your readers online? Nikki Crutchley: I do, and I get emails as well, which is maybe the loveliest thing to get as a writer. You slave away for months and months all by yourself writing this book, and it’s seriously the best thing when someone takes the time to email or reach out and say how much they enjoyed the book. Jenny Wheeler: That’s great. When is the fourth one due to be published? Nikki Crutchley: I’m only halfway through the first draft so a little while yet. My agent will be pitching it to publishers in the next little while so we’ll say next year, shall we? Jenny Wheeler: Sure thing. That sounds great, Nikki. You’re continuing with your editing work as well, aren’t you? We should give a bit of a plug for your editing work. Nikki’s role as an editor Nikki Crutchley: I’m a proofreader, so I’m the person who comes at the very end. I work under Crucial Corrections, that’s the name of my proofreading business. As well as manuscripts – fiction and nonfiction – I proofread anything really, theses and websites and blogs and anything like that. Jenny Wheeler: We’ll put all the links for that on the podcast show notes so that people can find you very easily. Nikki Crutchley: Great. Jenny Wheeler: Thanks so much for being part of this today, Nikki. It’s been fantastic to talk and we’ll watch for the announcement on the auctioning with interest. Nikki Crutchley: Thanks for having me, Jenny. Jenny Wheeler: Okay. Bye.  If you enjoyed Nikki Crutchley’s small town mysteries you might also enjoy Sarah Barrie’s Rural Australian Crime Mysteries. LISTEN TO: Sarah Barrie’s Rural Crime Mysteries Thanks To Our Technical Support: The Joys of Binge Reading podcast is put together with wonderful technical help from Dan Cotton at DC Audio Services. 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