I (Tony McFadden, he/him) and my wife and kids have lived in many, many places, including cool places like the US Virgin Islands, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore and now, Australia. Lots of interesting places to meet interesting people.
AUTHOR LINKS:
Website: tonymcfadden.net
Bluesky: @tonymcfaddenwrites.bsky.social,
Facebook: @WritingsontheBeach
We’re here to discuss your latest book in the Nick Harding Case Files series – The Wrong One, which has just been released. What made you choose a Private Investigator with a background in the Financial Crimes Unit of the Australian Federal Police, rather than a PI with a background in another organisation or other branch of law enforcement?
Financial Crimes came from a time in my career where I was Governance Manager in a large organisation. Also, I already have a PI who was a former NSW cop, and another PI who was a rugby player who had to retire due to injuries and decided to take up the PI business.
The Financial Crimes angle was a new entry point into crimes, opening the door to something other than murder as the main crime. I purposely made my PI middle-aged with a preference to talk it out instead of fighting, though more often than not he ends up in a fight.
What do you think are the key elements to Aussie Noir and why do you enjoy writing this, and other crime thrillers?
First or all, it has to evoke Australia — the bush, the beaches, the heat (seasonally, of course). There has to be a larrikin attitude and a moral flexibility. A lot of self-reliance and resilience. I’m an immigrant here. I moved here over 20 years ago.
I have 2 memories that define Australia for me. The first is Hugh Jackman, after ziplining into an Oprah event at the Sydney Opera House and crashing into a wall. Next time you see him, he’s talking to Oprah with a bag of ice to his face with one hand and a glass of red wine in the other. The second is a surfer who was attacked by a shark and he repeatedly punched it in the head until it left him alone.
This is the 6th book in the Nick Harding series – is it ok for readers to start here? If they do, will they be missing any overarching character arcs or plot arcs that thread through the series, or is each book a standalone?
It stands alone. It references events that happened in an earlier book, but the references contain enough information (I hope) for a first time reader to follow the story. There are benefits to starting from Book 1, obviously. The relationships that Nick Harding has built over the books are further along by book 6.
How do you come up with the plots for your thrillers, and how did you find plotting The Wrong One – is it getting harder to come up with stories for Nick Harding, or do you have a well of ideas for his cases that you tap into?
I spend more time plotting than I do writing my first draft. The plots come in many different ways. Most times I see something in the news that sparks my interest and build from that. I’ll write all the obvious ways it could happen, then find an interesting way to flip the obvious. I tend to over plot, making the crime more complex than it needs to be. As I write the first draft I drop some of the more esoteric bits in favour of a more character-driven story line.
What is your favourite dynamic/s to write, and is that dynamic present in this book?
I have a couple of “favourite” dynamics. The original is between Nick Harding and a childhood friend, Davie Sangster, who starts off in book one helping Nick with some IT work (he has a cyber security background) and by book 6 is a partner in Haring and Sangster Investigations.
The second kind of happened. Lucy Patterson was introduced in Book 2 (Broken) as a client, a bank employee who wanted Nick to find a serial deadbeat fraudster. By Book 6 they are a romantic couple.
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