Doctors, danger and death: new medical thrillers

Authors Susan Hurley, Sue Ingleton and L M Ardor talk to Maggie Baron, former forensic scientist and inaugural President of Sisters in Crime, about the blood-tingling scenarios and scenes of crime they have encountered in the divergent worlds of science and medicine.

Susan Hurley has drawn on her thirty years in medical research and the pharmaceutical industry for her debut thriller, Eight Lives (Affirm Press, 2019).

Featuring former refugee David Tran, Golden Boy of Australian medical research, the book explores power, class and prejudice in contemporary Melbourne. With its origins in a real-life drug trial that ended in tragedy, Eight Lives is told from the perspectives of David’s friends, family and business associates, who each played a role in his downfall. Eight volunteers are recruited for the first trial of David’s drug. This crucial step sets him on the path to global fame and results in windfall gains for his investors. But when David dies in baffling circumstances, motives are put under the microscope.

Susan was shortlisted for the 2017 Peter Carey Short Story Award and Eight Lives was shortlisted for the 2018 UK Caledonia Novel Award.

Making Trouble (Tongued with Fire): An imagined history of Harriet Elphinstone Dick and Alice C Moon (Spinifex Press, 2019) is the debut crime novel of Sue Ingleton, a multi-award-winning actor, director, writer and stand-up comedian.

Sue was inspired by the true story of two champion swimmers and lovers, Harriet Rowell and Alice Moon, who emigrated from England in 1875. They established a women’s gymnasium at the Queen Vic and Harriet also taught swimming at the St Kilda Sea Baths. After they separated, Alice was found dead in her bed. Suspicion rested upon the powerful, chauvinistic scientist John McGarvie Smith.

Sue has toured Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, the USA, UK and Europe with her political, outrageous, truthful one-woman shows. She has written and produced eleven plays, authored two books and her short stories have been published in three anthologies.

The Practice Baby (Critical Mass, 2018), the first in the Gene Hacker trilogy, is by gender-fluid former GP, L M Ardor.

Middle-aged Sydney GP Dee Flanery is convinced her patient didn’t die of natural causes. Her concerns are dismissed by the police and pathologists, but as she delves into the mystery, she uncovers a series of unrecognised murders and a sinister connection to her own past. Suspicion and paranoia fight with reason as she tries to uncover the truth. The Medical Board labels her psychotic and her deregistration is imminent, but can she survive her attempt to stop another murder?

L M Ardor is a former inner city general practitioner with a passion for writing books. This is their first published novel.

Maggie Baron is a former forensic scientist who worked in the area of drug and trace evidence analysis for six years. In 2015, she became the inaugural President of Sisters in Crime. She now works in infrastructure and transport planning, has finished her first crime novel featuring a forensics expert, and is working on her second.

Tickets
$20
$15 concession
$12 Sisters in Crime and Writers Victoria members
$10 Youth (under 19)

Tickets not sold prior to the event will be available at the door for $22 / $18 / $15 / $10
Dinner upstairs from 6.30pm (bookings not necessary)
Men or ‘brothers-in-law’ welcome

Bookings
Eventbrite

Venue
The Rising Sun Hotel (upstairs – no lift)
cnr Raglan Street and Eastern Road, South Melbourne
Melways map 57 H2
Free on-street parking after 6pm
Trams 1, 12 or 55 or St Kilda Road trams

Sun Bookshop stall
Sisters in Crime members receive a 10% discount

Additional information
Carmel Shute
0412 569 356
admin@sistersincrime.org.au