2, 2 and 2: Alan Carter talks about Heaven Sent

Alan Carter
Heaven Sent
(Fremantle Press)
SERIES CRIME FICTION

Alan Carter has had a meteoric career in crime—crime fiction, that is—since the publication of his first novel in 2011. He’s prolific, too—four novels since then, and here he is, about to release the fifth. (And I happen to know there’s another in the making, as I had the privilege of reading a draft—it’s a cracker!) 

As well as being a successful author, Alan is sometimes a television documentary director, and it’s in this capacity that I first met him: he has often worked with my husband, sound designer Ric Curtin. Clients have on occasion had their suspicions about Alan’s faraway gaze while working—deep in thought about their project or solving a knotty plot problem?

Alan’s Cato Kwong series—Prime Cut, Getting Warmer and Bad Seed—has been published in the UK, France, Germany and Spain, while his last novel, Marlborough Man, won the 2018 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel and was shortlisted for the 2018 Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Novel.

He was born in Sunderland, UK, emigrated to Australia in 1991, and now divides his time between Tasmania and life on a farm in New Zealand’s South Island. Such idyllic locations—such criminal preoccupations!

Here is the blurb for his new release, Heaven Sent, the latest in the Cato Kwong series:

Detective Sergeant Philip ‘Cato’ Kwong is light on sleep but high on happiness with his new wife Sharon Wang and their baby girl. But contentment is not compatible with life in the Job, and soon a series of murders of Fremantle’s homeless people gets in the way of Cato’s newfound bliss. As New WAve journalist Norman Lip flirts online with the killer, it becomes apparent that these murders are personal—every death is bringing the killer one step closer to Cato.

And now over to Alan…

2 things that inspired the book

Mark Billingham’s Lifeless, where his hero Tom Thorne goes undercover to track down a killer targeting London’s homeless, was, for me, a great example of how crime fiction can be used to interrogate an important social issue. In that regard, it’s a direct inspiration for Heaven Sent—although I don’t have Cato going undercover for this story. But victims and victimology are an important choice a crime writer makes in every story, and the representations we use and the attitudes we portray can say a lot not only about society but about us as writers.

Another inspiration, this time for the Norman Lip journalist character, was the long line of writers/reporters stretching back to, say, Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood and forward to the amoral journalist in the first series of The Bridge who decide to ‘deal with the devil’ for their professional advancement. It’s an ongoing dilemma that storytellers face, particularly where real life, true crime, and fiction converge, and again it’s fertile and explosive territory to tiptoe through.

2 places connected with the book

The old Swan View Railway Tunnel up in the hills outside Perth is a spooky place in a beautiful setting, and the brief history outlined on the information boards provided me with metaphor and suspense galore.

The spaces occupied by the homeless in and around Perth and Fremantle constantly shift, too. Beachside carparks, shop doorways, abandoned buildings, tourist precincts, parks, fast-food joints—all find different meanings and uses, depending on whose eyes you view them through, and when.

2 favourite elements of the book

DI Hutchens, Renaissance Man. Cato’s boss continues to be one of my favourites. He’s a dinosaur, not very PC, and gets to say a whole bunch of things I’d love to say but normally wouldn’t dare. But…old dogs, new tricks. He’s now spearheading the force’s new social media hearts and minds campaign. For Cato, it’s a disturbing development.

Catching a middle-aged man mid-tweet somehow deprived him of any residual dignity, reflected Cato. This former warrior of the streets, sunk so low.

Cato holds a mirror up to society. Over lunch, he discusses with amoral journalist and wannabe deep thinker Norman Lip the changing nature of immortality and fame.

Everything now is about fleeting associations with fame. People crave it and seize it like it’s an entitlement. These days Zapruder would probably miss the president’s assassination because he’d be too busy taking a selfie.

Heaven Sent is released on 1 November 2018
Find out more at Fremantle Press
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