An Isolated Incident

"Yes. An Isolated Incident isn’t a whodunnit at all. One of the things I like in crime fiction is when it’s a whydunnit, or when it’s about the ripple effects of a crime, and An Isolated Incident is very much about the aftermath of a crime. It follows the story of a local barmaid, Chris, in a small town, Strathdee, after her younger sister is brutally murdered. We meet Chris when she goes to identify the body, then we follow her as she comes to terms, or tries to come to terms, with her sister’s death. It’s also about the reactions of the town folk. We actually find out very little about the murder. As I said, it’s a small town setting. I do like books set in small towns. My novels are set between the city and a small town, because to me towns are very much like families, with all the pluses and negatives of a family. I’ve lived in small towns and they can be very supportive and very claustrophobic. You’re rubbing up against the same people day after day. Everybody knows your secrets, they know what you were like in school, they know what you were like as a teenager. They know your history. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . For Chris, she’s very much been cast in the role of ‘slut’. She developed this womanly figure at an early age, was always drawing the male gaze, she says, and so she eventually decides, well, that’s my role, that’s what I’m going to be. She’s not treated particularly well by the townsfolk, although she’s by no means an outcast. She’s a well-liked local barmaid. But you can see that she has been cast in this role. Alongside that, we’ve got the media storm that descends upon the town. We see this a lot in the real world with crimes against beautiful, young, white women. Half of the book is narrated by young reporter who arrives in town to report the case. So we see both of those things coming into play together: the tension between needing the media attention so the crime can get solved, and not wanting the media attention, because it feels voyeuristic. It’s a beautifully, beautifully written book. And it did something I didn’t ever think would be possible, which is that it made me feel empathy for, and perhaps even sympathy for, a man who’s been domestically violent. That’s Chris’s ex-husband. He is a reformed character. They’re separated, but he comes and cares for Chris. Emily Maguire manages to make us empathise with him; it’s a bit of a miracle to pull off, I think. This book, like Truth, introduced crime fiction to a much wider literary audience. It was shortlisted for the Stella Prize and the Miles Franklin Award, and it isn’t talked about as a crime novel—but my theory is, if it’s got a crime, it’s a crime novel. This one is centred around a murder. Maybe you’d call it a psychological thriller . It’s sometimes just down to marketing—and where a book needs to sit on a shelf, in the library or a bookshop. It needs to go somewhere. But what is frustrating is the assumption that literary fiction is well-crafted and thoughtful, that it talks about deeper things, and that crime fiction is on the far end of that spectrum, that it’s only about plotting, adventure, entertainment. Whereas the best books actually have a combination of both. “There’s crime fiction out there that is stunningly written, thoughtful, provoking, and very, very deep” There’s certainly literary fiction out there that is badly written and doesn’t have a good plot. The same can be said for crime fiction as well. There is crime fiction out there that is stunningly written, thoughtful, provoking, and very, very deep. It’s the idea that they’re separate things that’s frustrating, really. But that is changing, as you can see from these novels I’ve selected—not just the fact that they were written, but the fact that they’ve been hugely embraced by the wider community. I’ve had people read my books who are really keen crime readers, but I’ve also had a lot of people say to me, ‘I’d never read a crime book before.’ I think more people are open to reading crime novels because we’ve had writers like Peter Temple and Emily Maguire; ten years ago, they wouldn’t even pick it up because it’s had ‘thriller’ or ‘crime’ on the cover."