Celebrities have found a new side hustle: crime

These are nefarious times in publishing. Celebrities are turning to crime. While the pathway from star to children’s author is well trodden – think David Walliams, Madonna, Andy Lee – other high-profile personages are traversing the darker tunnel into crime fiction.Actor Bryan Brown has penned three well-received crime books set in coastal locations. Social commentator Jane Caro writes crime novels as well as other fiction and non-fiction. Tara Moss was a model before finding acclaim writing crime. Actor and former NRL player Matt Nable swapped gumshields for gumshoes, with his latest, Mire, released in July. Former federal finance minister Lindsay Tanner has published two thrillers featuring downbeat taxi-driver anti-hero Jack van Duyn. The first cosy crime novel by veteran stage and screen comic performer Jonathan Biggins, Ocean’s 55+, is scheduled for publication in October.Robert Forster made his name in alternative rock band The Go-Betweens before a successful solo career. His demeanour always suggested a muso on the verge of penning a novel, but when Songwriters on the Run appeared, the choice of genre – crime – surprised some.Singer-songriter and now novelist, Robert Forster.Stephen Booth“I like plot,” Forster says. “Twists and turns. It instantly has the potential to be entertaining.” This was a pleasure he found reading Raymond Chandler and all his descendants.“I wished to write fiction, things that I made up, things that were racing in my head. The book is based and embellished on a song I wrote in 2009 called Songwriters on the Run. It’s as if the song chose me. I knew the tone of the song, so the book followed.“Songwriting and novel writing are two very different forms, but they both involve subject matter that is close to me, personal, and that I have a feel for. What they have in common is the use of words to convey a world view. I’m lucky I am proficient in both.”Forster says that most readers of his book so far are people who already knew his music or his music journalism. “I am hoping the book spreads to readers who don’t know my musical life,” he says. “I think the book has the qualities and appeal to jump that gate. I wish to expand.”Louise Milligan is acclaimed for her work as an investigative reporter on television and in print. The horrifying stories she covered, including the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, took a significant personal toll. “About four years ago things began to become really difficult,” Milligan says. “I would wake up in the morning and feel like I was wading in treacle. I was diagnosed with PTSD. I was looking for a way to get out of my despair.”Investigative journalist-turned-fiction writer Louise Milligan.Hugh StewartMilligan remembered that she had three chapters of a crime novel in a neglected corner of her computer. She showed them to publisher Louise Adler, who encouraged her to push on. That was the genesis of her first novel, Pheasants Nest, which begins with investigative journalist Kate Delaney raped and dumped under a bridge. “It’s a dark premise, but she keeps herself sane through humour and story and imagining her life with her boyfriend,” Milligan says.“So much of my journalism has included or been near crimes. Of course I’d write about something that had a crime in it! As an investigative journalist, you’ve got this whole bottom drawer of yarns – not just storylines, but the stories within the stories you weren’t able to tell, the characters you weren’t able to fully flesh out.”Milligan’s second novel, Shellybanks, is set in her birth country, Ireland. Milligan draws on family stories for texture and context as she sends Delaney on a journey to uncover buried trauma.“Journalism skills are extremely helpful for crime fiction up to a point. Obviously being able to research is a big thing. It also helps that your ego can cope with editing, because you’ve been edited all your professional life. I’m obviously very lucky that I already had a platform and a profile, so I didn’t have to do the hard work to get a foot in the door. But you still have to prove yourself,” she says.”And, amazingly, I am out the other side of the darkness. I don’t have PTSD any more. Writing crime has been the best therapy ever – although ironically it makes me teary just saying that.” Holly Throsby had more than a decade as a working musician and released five albums before she published her first novel, Goodwood, in 2016. Asked if the term “celebrity author” is a pejorative, she replies: “I think so? I can’t tell any more.“At first, I was very much a musician writing a novel, but now I think the two mediums have blended for me and I feel comfortable inhabiting both spaces. I did come up through the music world, though, and that is a different education than coming up through the literary world.”‘I realised I could do genre and felt that if I applied what had worked for me with my music – local/suburban/footy/sex – I might be able to win some readers.’Dave WarnerThrosby believes that her songwriting skills are only indirectly transferable to her work as a novelist. “I am certainly interested in rhythm when writing prose, I think it’s a very important component to any writing,” she says. “But songwriting doesn’t prepare you for what a novel requires, in regards to narrative, pace, resolution. A song can be just a fragment or a mood. But readers are invested in books in a very different way.”She also enjoys the opportunity to discuss her work at festivals. “You don’t tend to get put on a panel with other musicians to talk about songwriting, so it’s an interesting thing to do: to talk about your work in public like that.”Internationally, various luminaries of the silver and small screens have had a crack at the crime-writing caper. Actors Hugh Laurie, Reese Witherspoon and Michael Caine have published crime novels with varying levels of success. Chat veteran Graham Norton has written crime, as well as other forms of fiction.The current heavyweight champion is Richard Osman, who had a solid career as a television presenter and producer before becoming a smash-hit crime novelist, with more than 17 million copies sold at last count.Dick Francis was an acclaimed steeplechase jockey before becoming famous for his thrillers. Jeffrey Archer came to prominence as a controversial British parliamentarian, then wrote his first crime novel to stave off bankruptcy. John Grisham was a Mississippi state parliamentarian before finding his true vocation writing legal thrillers. Counter-culture country music legend Kinky Friedman pivoted to crime fiction, writing 20 novels that mostly featured himself as detective and his mates in various supporting roles.The late Dolly Parton also tried her hand at the crime caper.Stephen Lovekin/WireImage for Songwriter’s Hall of FameThere is also the “with” approach to celebrity involvement. Hillary Clinton has “written” a novel with Louise Penny. Husband Bill has collaborated on three crime books with James Patterson. The inveterate co-author Patterson also produced Run, Rose, Run with the late Dolly Parton.“I think the celebrities or people who have a platform who are newly writing crime or thrillers are doing it due to the huge popularity of the genre, rather than the genre needing them,” says Pippa Masson, head of agents Curtis Brown. “A lot of these newer crime writers are adjacent to the space: journalists who report on crime or actors who have played in crime or thriller dramas. People who work with story in all forms.“The benefit to publishers is an in-built audience, and solid platform, and if those authors mean more people are going into bookstores to buy their latest book, then that’s a win in my book.”The elders of Australia’s celebrity-to-crime-author dogleg are Jane Clifton and Dave Warner. Clifton was a prolific actor and versatile singer when she penned the first of her three crime novels.“I was such a minor ‘celebrity’ that maybe ‘notorious’ might have been more appropriate,” is Clifton’s modest assessment. “I was reading a lot of crime at the time, so ‘write what you know’ – isn’t that the rule? I managed to get sex and death on page one of my first novel, Half Past Dead.“Acting certainly gave me a sense of how to develop a character and a good ear for dialogue. Also a sense of suspense, the cliffhanger. When I give writing workshops, I always stress that, as a writer, you must always please yourself first. Celebrity won’t help, trying to guess what a reader might like won’t help. Entertain yourself first. Find joy in the act of writing or do something else.”Warner is listed on Wikipedia as “Dave Warner (musician)” but, while he first sprang to national attention with the late-1970s anthem Suburban Boy, for the past three decades he has been a successful author.”There hasn’t been as much overlap as you might imagine between the music fan base and readership. Most of my music fans were men and most don’t tend to read much fiction,” Warner says.“Back in the band days, I tried to write a more literary, satirical novel, but that was not accepted by the couple of publishers I sent it to. I realised I could do genre and felt that if I applied what had worked for me with my music – local/suburban/footy/sex – I might be able to win some readers.“I hope ennui doesn’t set in with crime readers. In my most recent book, Sound Mind Dead Body, I deliberately shied away from outback noir, a genre I was one of the first, if not the first, of the modern era to write. Hopefully, crime readership will expand to match the supply, and I think whatever people are known for it should not exclude them from tilling new fields.”What else is happening in the book world?Looking for a last-minute Father’s Day gift? Try these booksBrilliant or boring? The verdict on Rachel Cusk’s new novelThis entire novel is one sentence. Somehow, it worksWhy fear of the “mad witch” still pins women down todayThe Booklist is a weekly newsletter for book lovers from Jason Steger. Get it delivered every Friday.