Michael Robotham Tells Shots Magazine Something True

Written by Ali Karim

We enjoyed reading the latest novel TELL ME SOMETHING TRUE from the former investigative journalist turned award-winning crime writer, Michael Robotham.

We wrote at the time …

Robotham’s small town crime novel is striated with menacing claustrophobia, where the truth is purposefully camouflaged from view and eroded by the passage of time. Despite the emotional heft of the book, the pages slip by so rapidly that the reader is forced to grip the cover until the knuckles turn white.

This paragraph written from the perspective of the main protagonist Arlo Hackett is the novel in a microcosm –

“Years ago, before I went to prison, I remember a TV commercial showing a tough-looking skinhead sprinting along a city street, charging at a middle-aged man who turns and holds up his briefcase to fend off the attack. Then the camera showed a different angle. A sling breaks and rocks and debris come crashing to the ground a split second after the skinhead pushes the man to safety. The message was clear – until you see the whole picture, you only see part of the story.”

Like tilting the angle of a prism so that the truth can be diffracted from the rest of the image. The acknowledgements help explain why this novel has the combined enthusiasm of a debut work - suffused with the polish of writer at the peak of their literary ability.

Read More Here

As Tell Me Something True is Robotham’s most personal novel, we had a few questions for the author, which he kindly answered, and we present them for Shots Magazine’s Readers …

Ali Karim: Welcome to Shots Magazine Michael.

Michael Robotham: Good to be here.

Ali: I enjoyed reading the background to ‘Tell Me Something True’ in your afterward / acknowledgements – So could you tell us how this novel came about both back Then, and also Now?

Mike: The ‘then’ is the easy part. I had dreamed of being a novelist since I was 11 years, growing up in the same very small country town that provides the setting for TELL ME SOMETHING TRUE. Back then, I wrote a letter to Ray Bradbury (the legendary author of Fahrenheit 451) and he wrote back to me and sent me the four short story books that weren’t available in Australia. From that moment, I wanted to be a writer. That’s why I became a journalist (to gather material) and by my early twenties, I began writing the story of Arlo Hackett and his brother Luke and how their lives were turned upside down by the arrival of a feisty, opinionated teenage girl in a stolen car.

Six years later, I was living in London and working as a feature writer for The Mail on Sunday. I met an agent, who submitted the novel, but it narrowly missed out being published. I put the novel in a bottom drawer and that’s where it has stayed for almost forty years.

Why ‘now? Because it’s about bloody time.

I have written 19 novels set in the UK and the US, but nothing in my homeland. That all changes with TELL ME SOMETHING TRUE. My first novel is becoming my 20^th. It is a love story and a mystery and a tragedy that will have readers reaching for the tissues. I hope so.

Ali: You spent a great deal of time in England, so what made you come to London from Australia back in the 1980s?

Mike: As mentioned, I began my career as a journalist in Sydney, working for an afternoon newspaper in the early 1980s. Back then, there were two great newspaper capitals in the world – London or New York – and any journalist worth his or her salt, wanted to test themselves in the premier league. I arrived in London in 1985, as a small fish jumping into a big pond. I had to fight for work but ultimately became an investigative reporter and feature writer for national newspapers covering stories like the fall of the Berlin Wall and Nelson Mandela’s release and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Although journalism took me over the world, I never lost track of my ultimate ambition – to become a novelist.

Ali: Did your investigative journalism involve much travel as well as danger?

Mike: I did a lot of travelling over that ten years. I once spent four months in India investigating a British charity boss who was abusing boys in his orphanages. Later, I spent months in the Moscow State Archives where I uncovered the love letters of Czar Nicholas and Princess Alexandra, as well as the Romanov family photo albums and the children’s diaries, which still had flowers pressed between the pages. I also discovered the Rasputin files, detailing how the mad monk was being followed by teams of secret police who documented his every sexual conquest.

Ali: Though you cut your ‘writing teeth’ as an investigative journalist, but was it always your intention / aim to become a novelist?

Mike: I had wanted to be a writer since my wonderful interaction with Ray Bradbury, but having grown up in very small country towns in Australia, I felt as though I had nothing to write about. Mark Twain had stolen all the best plots. Journalism was a career that took me around the world, gathering material and meeting interesting people, the great and the good, the famous and the infamous.

Ghostwriting proved to be another important step in my writing journey. Over the course of ten years, I helped fifteen well-known people to pen their autobiographies, I was the hidden hand behind these books and many I can’t mention. Those I can include Geri Halliwell, Lulu and Ricky Tomlinson.

Ali: So tell us about how you came into crime writing?

Mike: I was living and working as a journalist in London when I met a literary agent in 1988. I sent him the partly finished novel and he encouraged me to finish it. A year later it was submitted and missed out by a single vote in an acquisitions meeting with a major UK publisher. I was told afterwards, that if I’d set the novel in England, Ireland, Scotland or Wales, they would publish it in a heartbeat, but being set in a small Australian town made it difficult to market. Back in those days, it was rare for a crime novel set outside the UK or US to find success.

I put the manuscript in the bottom drawer and that’s where it’s been for decades. Periodically, I would pick it up and fall in love with the characters again, but I didn’t think it was time. Now all that changes. Crime readers are far more sophisticated and adventurous nowadays and are happy to read books set anywhere in the world. They can be in Venice with Guido Brunetti or in Oslo with Harry Hole or in Berlin with Bernie Gunther or in outback Australia with Aaron Falk.

Ali: And how much time passed between penning ‘Tell Me Something True’ and when you wrote ‘The Suspect’?

Mike: I began writing the novel in 1982. Finished it the first time in 1988. And picked it up again in 2025. It has been rewritten and reimagined, but the characters and the story are basically the same.

It was daunting going back. I read some passages and thought, ‘Wow, that guy could really write – where did he go?’ And other passages made me cringe because I could see the self-importance and naivety.

Ali: Your second and third published novels had two different titles Lost / The Drowning Man [2005] and Shatter / The Sleep of Reason [2008] could you tell us how and why that happened?

Mike: It has actually happened once. My second novel was called LOST and came out before the TV series of the same name. My UK publishers decided they wanted to change the title for the paperback to avoid confusion, but by then LOSThad won the Australia’s Ned Kelly Award for the year’s best crime novel. They couldn’t change the name of an award winner, hence the two titles.

THE SLEEP OF REASON was my much-loved working title for SHATTER. I really wanted to keep it, but I was overruled by my publishers around the world who preferred a title that was shorter and punchier.

Ali: Your books are very popular in Germany, and the Joe O'Loughlin series have been televised, so do you tour Germany? And what do you credit for your popularity in Germany?

Mike: Germany has been very good to me. I’ve had a string of number ones and seven films made for German TV. My breakthrough came with SHATTER in 2008, which saw me touring for the first time and getting huge crowds and fans waiting at my hotel lobby for my arrival.

Of course, I put my success down to a brilliant translator, but I remember once asking my team at Goldmann how they explained my success. I was told that German readers see my books as being more in the Scandi or Nordic-Noir school. I’m not too British or too American, but more European. I don’t know if this is true, but I love my German readers.

Ali: Did you have any involvement in the Australian [Network 10] / UK BBC TV series The Secrets She Keeps and / or UK ITV’s The Suspect?

Mike: I had a big involvement in The Secrets She Keeps because it was an Australian production, made jointly with the BBC. It was filmed in Sydney and I got to spend weeks in the writing room, storyboarding the action and reviewing the scripts.

Sadly, I didn’t have the same involvement with The Suspect which was written and filmed during the Covid lockdowns. Even if I could have escaped Australia and reached the UK, I couldn’t have visited the set, which was quarantined. This lack of involvement does colour my views of the productions.

Another UK project has been greenlit but I can’t give you the details until they are announced by the network / production company.

Ali: I know you got involved in ghost writing many autobiographies, so would you care to share [without naming names] any amusing anecdotes and insights you garnered talking with celebrities?

Mike: Where do you want to start? I have dodged the paparazzi with Geri Halliwell, listened to Lulu sing her life in songs, been on pub crawls with Ricky Tomlinson and heard hair-raising stories from SAS soldiers who were dropped deep behind enemy lines to fight in Iraq, Argentina, Northern Ireland, Kuwait, and Bosnia.

Ali: Your work has international appeal, between the series novels as well as the standalones, so would you tell us which of your novels has given you the most pleasure / satisfaction; and which international market popularity has surprised you the most?

Mike: Every novel begins with an idea which is an incredibly bright, shiny and perfect in the writer’s mind. The trick is to get that bright, shiny perfect thing onto the page. Invariably, there is a gap between the imagination and the reality, but occasionally, a writer gets close to capturing exactly what they imagined. For me that book was Life or Death which won me my first Gold Dagger in 2015. It’s about a man who escapes from prison the day before he’s due to be released. If that doesn’t hook you, nothing will.

What has surprised me the most and what has humbled me the most, has been the support of Stephen King, who picked up Shatter in 2008 and called it his book of the year. Since then, he’s read almost every one of my novels and posted his praise on social media. I remember telling my wife, ‘It won’t matter if I never sell another book. Stephen King has just called me a master.’

Ali: Mike Stotter and I recall meeting you and Linwood Barclay at the start of both your careers at ITW Thrillerfest II in New York back in 2007 with Mike Stotter. So [a] do you recall those early days before you became a bestseller and [b] you make mention of Linwood Barclay in your acknowledgements so what is it about his work that your find compelling?

Mike: I remember that Thrillerfest 2007. That’s actually where I met Linwood for the first time. His breakthrough novel, No Time To Say Goodbye was yet to be published, but Linwood made a point of seeking me out to tell me how much he admired my writing. He also admitted that I was his wife Neetha’s favourite writer. Given that she was sleeping with him – I thought that was serious praise.

I love how Linwood builds a new world with each new book. He can take the most ordinary of towns and families and friendships and bring them to life in rich, dark, terror-filled stories full of clever twists and satisfying endings.

Ali: I heard a rumour that you were writing a series of 1960s London based espionage novels under the pen name M J Robotham with the first in the series Mrs. Spy, being released earlier this year. Is there any truth to the rumour?

Mike: Hand on heart – nothing to do with me. Then again, if they’re really, really good, I’m happy to claim credit for them.

Ali: What books have enjoyed recently, and what Film / TV has made an impression?

Mike: There are so many good ones. Here are a few:

Books -

The Sellout by Paul Beatty won the Booker in 2016, but I didn’t get around to reading it. It’s a biting, dark and funny satire about a black farmer who decides the only way to restore black dignity self-esteem in his local community is to reinstitute segregation.

King of Ashes by S.A. Cosby is a cracking story about a family dangerously in debt to a vicious gang.

The Keeper by Tana French. The third and last in the Cal Hooper series about a Chicago detective who seeks a quiet life in rural Ireland. This one involves a dead beauty queen and a long list of possible suspects.

TV Shows -

Department Q – this was soooo good. Can’t wait for the sequel.

Legends – great cast and brilliant writing about a group of ordinary customs officer who go undercover to expose a drug trafficking operation.

Ali: And what are you been working on currently?

Mike: I’ve gone back to familiar territory, writing a new story about young London police officer, Philomena McCarthy, who has defied the odds to join the Met because she comes from a family of notorious London gangsters.

It involves a murder, a missing woman and a missing fortune that belongs to one of Britain’s richest men, a notorious drug dealer, who has spent 15 years in prison.

Ali: Thank you for your time and insight.

Mike: And thanks for your time too!

Shots Magazine would like to pass our thanks to Ellen Turner and Amy Richardson of Little Brown UK and Michael Robotham for his time, insight and patience.

We urge you to explore the work of this excellent crime fiction / thriller writer.

Here’s a little background -

Two times Gold Dagger winning and twice Edgar short-listed author Michael Robotham was born in Australia in November 1960 and grew up in small country towns that had more dogs than people and more flies than dogs. He escaped in 1979 and became a cadet journalist on an afternoon newspaper in Sydney.

Bibliography

Joe O'Loughlin Series

2004 The Suspect

2005 Lost / The Drowning Man (2005)

2008 Shatter

2010 Bleed for Me

2011 The Wreckage

2012 Say You're Sorry

2013 Watching You

2015 Close Your Eyes

2018 The Other Wife

Cyrus Haven Series