Crime author returns to the scene

1st February 2011

Crime writer and television director Alan Carter will tour Albany, Hopetoun and Esperance to promote his new book Prime Cut this February.

Shortlisted for a prestigious Debut Dagger Award by the Crime Writers Association (UK), Prime Cut is a fast-paced thriller set in regional WA. Carter said he wrote the book while living in Hopetoun as a “kept man” during the recent mining boom.

‘My wife got sick of me being on the road for my television commitments and sick of me talking about writing the great crime novel so, when she got a teaching job in Hopetoun, she called my bluff and said she’d pay the bills if I stayed home, did the housework, and wrote this book I always claimed I had in me,’ said Carter.

The result is a novel which enters a seedier side of the mining industry while telling the story of a brutal serial killer in hiding on the Western Australian coast.

‘I was interested in using the crime genre to explore some of the darker aspects of the boom and its effects on small towns and their economies,’ said Carter.

‘My main character DSC Cato Kwong is a flawed cop who has gone from being a multicultural poster-boy for the police force to investigating dead cattle in the far-flung corners of regional WA.’

‘When a body floats ashore in Hopetoun he is given a chance to redeem himself,’ said Carter.

On Sunday 13 February Carter will return to the scene of the crime to launch Prime Cut at the Toun Beach Cafe – the real-life Hopetoun icon featured in his novel. Other stops include Angus & Robertson Albany on Thursday 10 February and Le Grande Bookshop in Esperance on Saturday 12 February.

Prime Cut is Carter’s debut novel. Its sequel is scheduled for release in 2012. Carter was inspired to write crime after filming the groundbreaking ABC documentary ‘The Accused’, which took him inside an Australian courtroom to film a jury trial for the first time for Australian television. His other television credits include ‘Desperately Seeking Sheila’, and most recently ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ for SBS television.

Prime Cut is available at all good bookstores and online at www.fremantlepress.com.au

For more information please contact Claire Miller, cmiller@fremantlepress.com.au