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Speaker 1: Jum Mission with Jonesy and Amanda Well.

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Speaker 2: Our next guest is the country's leading crime fiction author.

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Speaker 2: And not just that we went to UNI together a

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Speaker 2: million years ago. How to make me feel inadequate? Good

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Speaker 2: on you, Chris Hammer. But two of his books are

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Speaker 2: international best sellers. The first one was Scrublands, the second

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Speaker 2: one was Silver. He's just written a third in the

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Speaker 2: series called Trust, which I've just finished and I loved

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Speaker 2: Chris Hammer.

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Speaker 3: Hello, good morning to you.

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Speaker 1: Is it nice to be slagged off in an intro?

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Speaker 1: Chris is our guest, and you're slagging him off just

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Speaker 1: because you have inadequacies?

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Speaker 2: Well, you know what I've loved too, Chris is your

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Speaker 2: book Trust has been described as the best Australian crime

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Speaker 2: novel since Peter Temple's The Broken Shaw. Not just is

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Speaker 2: that an extraordinary compliment, but Peter Temple was our writing

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Speaker 2: lecturer at Union. He was terrifying sometimes, wasn't he?

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Speaker 3: He was completely terrifying that I I tell you what.

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Speaker 3: When he started writing his jank Irish books. I started

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Speaker 3: reading them and I really liked them, and I think

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Speaker 3: that's what really seeded the idea in my mind. Hey,

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Speaker 3: I'm I At some point I might try my hand

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Speaker 3: at this, So I think I owe Peter something of

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Speaker 3: a debt.

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Speaker 2: Peter was notoriously a tough marker. Many of the girls

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Speaker 2: we had giant crushes on him because he was so tough.

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Speaker 2: But he just write the most caustic comments under your writing.

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Speaker 2: But so this is the third in the series. You

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Speaker 2: make it sound like you know you've been a writer

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Speaker 2: your whole life, or you'd be easy to think you had.

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Speaker 2: But you came to this after thirty years of being

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Speaker 2: a foreign correspondent.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. I was a journal for thirty years, not all

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Speaker 3: as a foreign correspondent. Spent a lot of time in

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Speaker 3: the press gallery in Canberra as well. And I've got

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Speaker 3: to tell you, just making stuff up for a living

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Speaker 3: is a godsend. I enjoy it so much. No, you

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Speaker 3: don't have to worry about the facts or deathly nation

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Speaker 3: or protecting source, any of that. It's so liberating. I

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Speaker 3: recommend it.

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Speaker 1: So your main character Martin Scarsden, and I've only read

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Speaker 1: scrub Lands, but I really enjoyed it. Was such a

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Speaker 1: page turn and I'm happy to see his character continue

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Speaker 1: because when I first read it, I thought, man, this

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Speaker 1: guy would make a great reoccurring character. Is he any

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Speaker 1: way based on you?

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Speaker 3: Some of the journalism is, but he's more based on

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Speaker 3: some of the really damaged sort of war correspondents that

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Speaker 3: I'd run into traveling overseas, the people who had seen

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Speaker 3: too much. But he does change over the three books.

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Speaker 3: The latest book, Trust, you can absolutely read it as

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Speaker 3: a stand alone. You don't have to have read Scrublands

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Speaker 3: and Silver. But he belums, if I put it this way,

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Speaker 3: becomes more human as the books go along.

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Speaker 2: He grows the first one scrub Lands, And I know

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Speaker 2: you've been described as a great writer of Australian noir.

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Speaker 2: A lot of this was sort of set in a

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Speaker 2: very you understand environments very well. This seemed that the

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Speaker 2: drought had had a big impact on the land, and

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Speaker 2: you'd spent some time looking at all those small towns

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Speaker 2: hugely impacted.

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Speaker 3: That's right. Well, indeed, when we were at Uni together, Amanda,

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Speaker 3: back all those years ago, there was a really severe

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Speaker 3: drought then, if you remember, a short one. And then

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Speaker 3: later on I wrote a non fiction book on the

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Speaker 3: Murray Darling Basin right at the height of the Millennial drought,

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Speaker 3: and I spent a week out in that landscape in

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Speaker 3: a little town right out on the hay plain where

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Speaker 3: the land is so flat you can see the curvature

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Speaker 3: of the earth and there's no trees, and in the

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Speaker 3: middle of the drought, it was just so barren. And

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Speaker 3: that really stuck with me, that setting, And so when

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Speaker 3: I came to write scrub Lands, I didn't have to

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Speaker 3: fish around for a setting. It was there in my

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Speaker 3: head already.

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Speaker 1: Because Madam you were talking about the drought that you

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Speaker 1: had at university.

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Speaker 3: That was.

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Speaker 1: Something something else. But Chris would love the book. I'm

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Speaker 1: so looking forward to reading Trust. It's available in all

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Speaker 1: good bookstores today. Buy it, read it, and then give

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Speaker 1: it to someone else for Christmas.

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Speaker 2: By as many copies as your copies as you can. Chris,

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Speaker 2: it's great to talk to you, and just so congratulations,

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Speaker 2: what a great series of books.

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Speaker 3: Thank you so much. With join Z and Amanda