“It felt more like an experience, than reading a story,” says Jacky Collins as she introduces new Australian crime author Peter Papathanasiou and his new novel The Stoning. Surely there can be no greater praise for any writer who sets out to craft an immersive novel that stays with its readers.
Here in the latest in our The Doctor will see you now series, our friend Jacky – AKA Dr Noir – talks to Peter about a whole range of topics that his novel touches on such as the remoteness of the Outback, dust and heat, racial prejudice between townies and immigrants and indigenous Australians, addiction… and plenty more. It’s in this maelstrom of ill feeling and isolation that a schoolteacher has been bound to a tree and stoned to death. Biblical in the worst way, you could say, and it even has a prodigal son in protagonist Detective Sergeant George Manolis, who returns to his home town of Cobb to mourn the death of his father. As you might guess, Manolis ends up in the middle of the investigation.
There’s also some enlightening discussion about Peter’s background studying criminal law, a key ingredient in his understanding of the situations and characters he describes. We loved taking in this a wide-ranging conversation about the author’s sources of inspiration. There seems to be no end of quality crime fiction coming out of Australia at the moment. Watch the video, then grab a copy of Peter Papathanasiou’s The Stoning using the link below.