Meet Australian Crime Writer
GREG WOODLAND
Greg Woodland comes from a screenwriting and filmmaking background and The Night Whistler is his first novel.
His first book, Pangs, won two Varuna fellowships, though wasn’t published (he’ll return to it next year, for a post-Covid version). His second novel, The Night Whistler, is the first book in a rural crime series set in the fictional New England town of Moorabool in the late 1960’s and ‘70s. Greg is currently writing his third novel, The Carnival is Over, the next book in the Moorabool series.
Why write about New England?
“I spent a large part of my childhood in the 1960s growing up in South Tamworth, where my dad was a commercial traveler and my mum a housewife bringing up five young sons pretty much on her own. Then after a brief stint finishing high school in Sydney and Tweed Heads, I moved to Armidale to study Zoology at University of New England, inexplicably chucking it in halfway through my third year. After another year as a dishwasher, brick-cleaner and guitarist in a punk rock band, I left Armidale for Sydney in 1979, where I’ve lived ever since. I’ve returned many times to the New England area and still have close ties with and friends from Armidale.”
A FEW OF GREG’s FAVOURITE READS
AUSTRALIAN CRIME – RURAL CRIME – BUSH NOIR
Garry Disher – ‘Under the Cold Bright Lights’, the two Hirsch books, ‘Bitter Wash Road’ and ‘Peace’, the Peninsular Hal Challis series ‘Snapshot’, and Wyatt, ‘Kill Shot’
Chris Hammer – ‘Scrublands’
Christian White (though it’s set mostly in the USA) ‘The Nowhere Child’
Mark Brandi – ‘Wimmera’
Jane Harper – ‘The Dry’
Dervla McTiernan – ‘The Ruin’
Peter Temple – ‘In the Evil Day’ – ‘The Broken Shore’, ‘Truth’, ‘Bad Debts’, all the Jack Irish books
Adrian McKinty – ‘The Bloomsday Dead’
All the Sean Duffy books ‘The Cold, Cold Ground’, ‘Rain Dogs’, ‘Police at the Station and They Don’t Look Friendly…’ ‘The Chain’
Michael Robotham – ‘Bleed for Me’, ‘Bombproof’, ‘Say You’re Sorry’, ‘Life or Death’
Malla Nunn – ‘A Beautiful Place to Die’ *set in South Africa
SOUTH AFRICAN CRIME FICTION
Dion Meyer – ‘Blood Safari’
Natalie Conyer – ‘Present Tense’
USA CRIME FICTION
James Lee Burke – ‘The Tin Roof Blowdown’, ‘Rain Gods’, ‘In the Moon of Red Ponies’, ‘Heartwood’, ‘Sunset Limited’ and many, many more
James Ellroy – ‘LA Confidential’, ‘The Big Nowhere’, ‘The Black Dahlia’
Carl Hiaasen – ‘Stormy Weather’, ‘Sick Puppy’
Elmore Leonard – ‘Get Shorty’, ‘Fire in the Hole’, ‘Freaky Deaky’, ‘Rum Punch’
Cormac McCarthy – ‘No Country for Old Men’
Ed McBain – ‘Fat Ollies Book’, ‘Candyland’
Jim Thompson – ‘The Grifters’, ‘The Killer Inside Me’
Patricia Highsmith – ‘Strangers on a Train’, ‘The Talented Mr Ripley’, ‘Ripley’s Game’
Dennis Lehane – ‘The Drop’
SCANDI-NOIR
Henning Mankell –‘Before the Frost’, ‘The Troubled Man’, ‘The Man who Smiled’, ‘The Man from Beijing’
Stieg Larsson – ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’, ‘The Girl Who Played with Fire’
Peter Hoeg – ‘Smilla’s Feeling for Snow’
Jo Nesbo – ‘The Snowman’ ‘The Redbreast’ ‘Knife’
Hakan Nesser – ‘The Unlucky Lottery’
Available from your
favourite booksellers.
Available from your
favourite booksellers.
Copyright 2020 Greg Woodland
Published by Text Publishing
Website design by Wild Honey Creative
When he’s not writing, editing or in lockdown, Greg fronts two bands on guitar and vocals, with sounds on-theme for a murder mystery.
Goodnight Moon
The Cheating Hearts Band
Greg Woodland vocals and acoustic guitar, Peter Adams electric guitars, Jim Allison bass, Nick Fadeev drums
Video produced by Michael Palmer
Where They Never Know Your Name
The Cheating Hearts Band
Greg Woodland vocals and acoustic guitar, Peter Adams electric guitars, Jim Allison bass, Nick Fadeev drums
Video produced by Michael Palmer
Who’s Been Talking
The Band of Misfits
Greg Woodland vocals, acoustic guitar, Michael Palmer electric guitar, bass, drums, blues harp, producer Michael Palmer
Video produced by Michael Palmer