Hyland flings

Kerrie of Oz Mystery Readers and Mysteries in Paradise puts me in the way of two entertaining interviews with Adrian Hyland, author of Diamond Dove (called Moonlight Downs in the U.S.).

Hyland and his debut novel have long been favorites here at Detectives Beyond Borders, and I also reviewed the book for my newspaper. I thought I knew everything about author and novel. I was wrong.

The first interview is courtesy of Barbara Fister, who asked students in her international crime-fiction class to submit questions for Hyland. The result yielded some lively and surprising answers, of which my favorite is Hyland's disarmingly straightforward explanation for why he wrote in the voice of a young half-Aboriginal, half-white woman:

"I originally wrote the story from the perspective of a young whitefeller coming up from down south, discovering his roots, etc. However, whatever I did to it, it seemed too autobiographical – a roman a clef – and nothing could be more boring (especially to me) than me."

Fister also links to Hyland's conversation with Stuart MacBride in Shots Ezine, a discussion made especially enjoyable by MacBride's freewheeling interviewing style. The chat includes, among other things, an amusing riposte from the Australian Hyland to the Scotsman MacBride on the subject of dialect and slang.

MacBride's fiction has a harder edge than Hyland's, which makes this funny, enlightening interview a productive exercise in boundary-crossing. Don't miss this entertaining and instructive opportunity to watch a couple of writers sitting around talking.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008