Best of Crime Fiction on Better Reading’s Stories Behind the Story Podcast

Dinuka McKenzie is an Australian writer and book addict. Her debut crime fiction novel, The Torrent, won the HarperCollins Australia 2020 Banjo Prize and was published in February 2022. She is represented by Alex Adsett Literary.

When not writing, Dinuka works in the environmental sector and volunteers as part of the team behind the Writers Unleashed Festival. She lives in Southern Sydney with her husband, two kids and their pet chicken.

Kyle Perry is a drug and alcohol counsellor based in Hobart, Tasmania. He has grown up around the Tasmanian bush and seas, with the landscape a key feature of his writing and his spare time. He loves the sea, and his entire leg is covered in ocean tattoos. His debut novel, The Bluffs, has been translated into five languages. It was shortlisted for the Dymocks Book of the Year and the Indie’s Debut Fiction Book of the Year, and was longlisted for the Australian Book Industry Awards’ General Fiction Book of the Year.

From teaching FBI agents how to detect and recover human remains, to separating and identifying commingled body parts in her Montreal lab, as one of only seventy-seven forensic anthropologists ever certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology, Dr Kathy Reichs has brought her own dramatic work experience to her mesmerising forensic thrillers.Kathy Reichs’s first novel Déjà Dead was a #1 New York Times bestseller and won the 1997 Ellis Award for Best First Novel. A Conspiracy of Bones is Kathy’s nineteenth entry in her series featuring forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan. Kathy was also a producer of the hit Fox TV series, Bones, which is based on her work and her novels. Dr. Reichs is one of very few forensic anthropologists certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology. She served on the Board of Directors and as Vice President of both the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and the American Board of Forensic Anthropology, and as a member of the National Police Services Advisory Council in Canada. She divides her time between Charlotte, North Carolina, and Montreal, Québec. Visit Kathy at KathyReichs.com.

Michael Connelly decided to become a writer after discovering the books of Raymond Chandler while attending the University of Florida. Once he decided on this direction he chose a major in journalism and a minor in creative writing - a curriculum in which one of his teachers was novelist Harry Crews.After graduating in 1980, Connelly worked at newspapers in Daytona Beach and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, primarily specializing in the crime beat. In Fort Lauderdale he wrote about police and crime during the height of the murder and violence wave that rolled over South Florida during the so-called cocaine wars.In 1986, he and two other reporters spent several months interviewing survivors of a major airline crash. They wrote a magazine story on the crash and the survivors which was later short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. The magazine story also moved Connelly into the upper levels of journalism, landing him a job as a crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times, one of the largest papers in the country, and bringing him to the city of which his literary hero, Chandler, had written.After three years on the crime beat in L.A., Connelly began writing his first novel to feature LAPD Detective Hieronymus Bosch. The novel, The Black Echo, based in part on a true crime that had occurred in Los Angeles, was published in 1992 and won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel by the Mystery Writers of America.Connelly's books have been translated in 31 languages and have won the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, Dilys, Nero, Barry, Audie, Ridley, Maltese Falcon (Japan), .38 Caliber (France), Grand Prix (France), and Premio Bancarella (Italy) awards.Michael lives with his family in Florida.Michael also makes regular appearances on the TV show Castle .

Before becoming a novelist, Michael Robotham was an investigative journalist working across America, Australia and Britain, and with clinical and forensic psychologists as they helped police investigate complex, psychologically driven crimes. Michael's 2004 debut thriller, The Suspect, sold more than 1 million copies around the world. It is the first of nine novels featuring beloved Joe O'Loughlin. Good Girl, Bad Girl and When She Was Good are the first two books in a new series featuring forensic psychologist Cyrus Haven. Michael is the only Australian to win the UK's prestigious Gold Dagger Award twice - for Good Girl, Bad Girl and Life or Death. Good Girl, Bad Girl was also shortlisted for the 2020 Edgar Award for Best Novel. In 2020, The Secrets She Keeps was adapted for television. He lives in Sydney.