Behind the Crimes with Robert Murphy

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How - and why - did celebrated screenwriter George Kay take a true crime story and create a tense, claustrophobic thriller set in an English private school?

‘Gone’ stars Eve Myles as overlooked detective sergeant Annie Cassidy brought in to investigate the disappearance of the wife of domineering headmaster Michael Polly (David Morrissey.)

In this interview, George describes how he was inspired by the detective Julie Mackay (last week’s episode) and her book To Hunt a Killer.

But the series was influenced by two other real-life investigations.

George speaks about how he moved from writing episodic scripts for Killing Eve and other series to becoming one of the UK’s most bankable and acclaimed drama showrunners.

And he touches on some of the big themes raised in Gone: masculinity and how some institutions fail to nurture generations of boys.

George has featured in two previous episodes of Behind the Crimes. He talked about how he created The Long Shadow, about the crimes of Peter Sutcliffe:

And of his previously unknown connection to the Lord Lucan nanny who evaded the murderous earl:

Julie Mackay is the former detective superintendent who led the inquiry into the cold case of Melanie Road.

For more than three decades, the killer of the 17-year-old schoolgirl evaded justice.

For the final seven years, this inquiry was led by Julie Mackay at Avon & Somerset Police.

Julie and I wrote To Hunt a Killer - an award-winning book about her tireless hunt for the murderer.

The book was optioned by New Pictures, the creators of Gone. Screenwriter George Kay created a fictional world, using the book as inspiration, rather than making a straight adaptation.

Gone centres on the domineering headmaster Michael Polly (David Morrissey) whose wife Sarah vanishes from his prestigious West Country school. Det Sgt Annie Cassidy (Eve Myles) is brought in to find her. Instead of being allowed to lead the hunt, she’s sidelined as the Family Liaison Officer. But her new position gives her unique access to the Polly family home. And the more she sees of this dogmatic, repressed and powerful man, the more she questions whether he was responsible for his wife’s vanishing.

In this podcast episode, Julie describes starting as the sole woman on her police team, what it was like to work undercover, to have a loaded sawn-off shotgun pointed at her head, reflects on the challenges of the Melanie Road inquiry, and what it was like to run a team of nearly 200 detectives when she finally got the top job leading a regional Murder Squad.

Gone is aired on ITV in the UK on Sundays and Mondays throughout March with all episodes appearing on ITVX on March 8th for the binge-watchers among you.

Gone is written by George Kay and directed by Richard Laxton. It stars Eve Myles and David Morrissey and co-stars Jennifer Macbeth, Arthur Hughes, Nicholas Nunn, Elliot Cowan, Billy Barrett, Rupert Evans, Jodie McNee, Oscar Batterham, and Clare Higgins.

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Doctor Who, Spooks, Luther: some of Britain’s best-loved TV crime dramas have scripts written by Neil Cross.

The Bristolian who now lives in New Zealand created Idris Elba’s beloved London detective on a spur-of-the-moment during a meeting with BBC managers.

And, more recently, he devised the fast-paced, twisty, laugh-out-loud thriller The Iris Affair, featuring Niamh Algar and Tom Hollander.

In this interview, Neil describes how his life changed in a chance-moment at a careers advice meeting at university.

He describes the difference between writing for an established show with an engaged following - like Doctor Who - compared with creating his own series.

And, in this open, confessional interview, he talks about his tough upbringing in Bristol and Scotland, being expelled from school, spending years unemployed, before getting into university and embarking on his writing career.

You can find out more about Neil here: http://www.neil-cross.com/

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Imagine you are a woman in 1659 Papal Rome. You can’t choose your husband, your job, your home. If your family had no money, you’d most likely end up in a convent or on the streets.

And what if your life was ruled by a brutal husband, father or brother?

Divorce? No chance.

Anna Mazzola discovered the true case of Gironima Spana who supplied women with a potion known as Aqua Tofana to sort the problem: to kill the men.

But the corpses didn’t decay as they should, and the authorities were alerted.

‘The Book of Secrets’ reimagines this story from three perspectives: the poisoner, a survivor of domestic abuse and the prosecutor entrusted with catching the killers.

The Book of Secrets won the 2025 Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger Award - one of the biggest accolades in crime writing.

In this interview, Anna Mazzola describes the inspiration and research for the novel, how her work as a human rights lawyer informs her work, and her new venture writing crime/political thrillers set in the modern day under her pen-name Anna Sharp.

You can find out more about Anna Mazzola here:

https://annamazzola.com/

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Journalist and crime author Andrew Wilson spent half a decade researching and writing Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith.

When she died, aged 74 in 1995, Highsmith left one of the world’s largest literary estates.

Inside her notebooks, or cahiers, Andrew found never-before-seen reminiscences of her many (and I mean many) love affairs, notes about the dark crimes which prompted her stories and people she had watched which inspired her characters.

Highsmith rarely sold more than 8,000 copies a year in the USA. She was far more celebrated in Europe, to where she moved in the 1970s.

But now, following the superb Netflix series ‘Ripley’ as well as the 1999 film ‘The Talented Mr Ripley,’ interest in Highsmith has never been higher.

Who was Patricia Highsmith?

A lesbian writer who wrote a queer classic yet was deeply misogynistic. A political liberal who held profoundly racist views. A writer of psychological thrillers who hated people.

And how did she manage to persuade quite so many married women into bed?

And what her fascination with snails? Why did she keep them in her bra?

Andrew Wilson describes all of this and about why he spent five years writing ‘Beautiful Shadow.’

You can find more about Andrew Wilson here: https://www.andrewwilsonauthor.co.uk/

Andrew’s Agatha Christie mysteries are available here: https://www.andrewwilsonauthor.co.uk/the-agatha-christie-mysteries

His new biography of Marilyn Monroe I Wanna Be Loved By You is here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wanna-Be-Loved-You-Marilyn-ebook/dp/B0FB496Q27/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0

In this episode we refer to Truman Capote. You can hear more about In Cold Blood here:

And Andrew talks about Highsmith’s interest in the Lord Lucan case. You can hear more about that here:

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The creator of The Snowdonia Killings talks true crime, pivoting from screenplays to novels (via teaching) and how his own publishing company has proved far more lucrative than being traditionally published.

When, in 2020, Simon couldn’t get an agent or a publisher, he decided to self-publish his first novel, expecting just a few friends to buy it.

But soon it was soaring up the Amazon charts.

The Snowdonia Killings, with its lead character of Det Insp Ruth Hunter, seemed to touch a nerve with fans of crime fiction.

Since then, Simon has written more than THIRTY books and has sold millions of copies.

Simon’s books are fantastic reads, with great characters, evocative settings and terrific twists.

You can find out more (and claim a free book) here:

https://www.simonmccleave.com

To WATCH this interview - click here: https://open.substack.com/pub/robertmurphy/p/simon-mccleave-the-screenwriter-turned?r=1lsdh7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Mark Gatiss’s new crime drama is set in 1946 London: a city recovering from the Blitz, when gangs ran wild and gun crime was rife.

Bookish is inspired by both true crimes and the Golden Age of Detective Fiction which preceded the Second World War.

But what were the true crimes of this period?

And how does Mark, who works across so many genres (comedy, horror, sci-fi, action, period-drama) and platforms (TV, books, theatre, film) create a show which resonates? Bookish is already posting big audience numbers on U&Alibi in the UK.

You may know Mark from The League of Gentlemen, Sherlock, Doctor Who, Game of Thrones, Dracula - and MANY other shows.

But what is it that brings him back to crime?

To watch this interview, click here:

https://open.substack.com/pub/robertmurphy/p/sherlocks-mark-gatiss-true-crime?r=1lsdh7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

The Detection Club, established in 1930, is the world’s first social network for crime writers.

It’s founder fathers and mothers included Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers and Anthony Berkeley.

Its current membership includes Ian Rankin, Val McDermid and Richard Osman.

The current (and only the eighth) President, Martin Edwards, has released an updated edition of his book ‘The Golden Age of Murder’ in which he talks about the true cases which inspired the literary greats of the Inter-War years.

And he describes how many of our classic crime novels riff around the subject of a ‘justified murder.’

To WATCH this interview, click here: https://open.substack.com/pub/robertmurphy/p/video-interview-martin-edwards-president?r=1lsdh7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

More about Martin Edwards : https://martinedwardsbooks.com/ and https://substack.com/@martinedwardsbooks/

This podcast mentions an earlier episode about the Thompson-Bywaters with laura thompson case. You can hear that here:

How do you take on one of the biggest literature legacies of the past half-century? That’s what Nick Harkaway was asked to do after his father, David Cornwell (aka John Le Carré) died in 2020.

Karla’s Choice, Nick’s latest in the George Smiley world puts us in a sinister world of subterfuge, Hungarian agents and 1960s London.

In this interview, Nick tells us how he approached the writing of Karla’s Choice, what he learned from his father - and what he had to learn on-the-job, and how he balances writing in the Le Carré world with his own books.

You can get Karla’s Choice here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Karlas-Choice-John-Carr%C3%A9-Novel-ebook/dp/B0CZPPHPCR?ref_=ast_author_mpb

PLUS: My book ‘Decoy’ won ‘Book of the Year’ at the True Crime awards in London last week. Judges praised the quality of the writing, the high-end research and journalism and the issues raised.

You can grab a copy here:

UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Decoy-secretive-historical-undercover-operations/dp/0008666814/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0

USA: https://www.amazon.com/Audible-Decoy/dp/B0CS6XNB54?ref_=ast_author_dp

Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/Decoy-secretive-historical-undercover-operations-ebook/dp/B0CLTGQDQJ?ref_=ast_author_dp

Australia: https://www.amazon.com.au/Decoy-secretive-historical-undercover-operations-ebook/dp/B0CLTGQDQJ?ref_=ast_author_dp

Want to watch this interview? Check it out here: https://robertmurphy.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/165538997/share-center

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Recorded at CrimeFest in Bristol, England, May 2025

Lee Child on how his TV career helped him write, his favourite authors, how he ‘writes the fast stuff slow and the slow stuff fast’ and handing the Jack Reacher baton to his brother Andrew.

Links mentioned in the show:

https://www.jackreacher.com/us/

https://www.crimefest.com/

Decoy book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Decoy-secretive-historical-undercover-operations/dp/0008666814/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0

To Hunt A Killer: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hunt-Killer-gripping-Longlisted-non-fiction/dp/0008507473/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0

Want to watch the interview? Paste this into your browser: https://robertmurphy.substack.com/p/lee-child-talks-reacher-his-craft