Catherine Lea is a thriller writer whose latest book, The Water’s Dead, is New Zealand's answer to Vera Stanhope. It's the first in a new Kiwi crime series, a thriller with surprising twists.

Hi there, I'm your host Jenny Wheeler, and on Binge Reading today Catherine talks about her new character, Detective Inspector Nyree Bradshaw and her race against time to solve a murder where everyone has something to hide and no one is telling the truth. If she fails, it's likely a child dies. It's the first in a new series.

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Links to information mentioned in the show:

Ann Cleeves: https://www.anncleeves.com/

Ruth Rendell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Rendell

Ngaire Dawn Porter: https://www.nzonscreen.com/profile/nyree-dawn-porter/biography

Elizabeth McClaine Mystery series: https://www.authorcatherinelea.com/books

The Dry by Jane Harper: https://janeharper.com.au/books/the-dry

Ed McBain: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/21318.Ed_McBain

Chris Hammer: Scrublands, https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/books/fiction/crime-mystery/Scrublands-Chris-Hammer-9781760632984

Where to find Catherine Lea: 

Website: https://www.authorcatherinelea.com/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Author-Catherine-Lea-1138506476177298/Twitter: @CatherineLeaNZBookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/catherine-lea

What follows is a "near as" transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions.

But now, here’s Catherine.

Introducing thriller author Catherine Lea

Jenny Wheeler: Hello there, Catherine and welcome to the show. It's great to have you with us.

Catherine Lea: Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be there with you.

Catherine Lea - Page-turning thriller writer

Jenny Wheeler: It's wonderful, almost a novelty to have a fellow New Zealander. I don't deliberately choose or not choose Kiwis. I choose people who fit the books we're doing, but it's lovely to have somebody who's writing those books in New Zealand. 

Catherine Lea: Thank you. That's why I decided to write the books in New Zealand. I've got some set in the States. When I started writing – I put my first book out in 2013 – somebody said, don't set them in New Zealand for goodness sake, nobody will ever read them. Set them in the States. So that's what I did.

And of course, then the process began. I decided to set a politically based thriller and boy, their politics are quite different to ours. It was such a lot of research. I thought, you know what? I know far more about New Zealand. We have got such an amazing country, such diverse cultures, so much flavor, so much brilliance and the country is so beautiful. Why not set them here?

Jenny Wheeler: To backtrack a bit, you write thrillers with heart, as your website says, and you have done several international page-turners. We will get to those a little later on because they are worth talking about, but your latest book, the one we're focusing on because it has just come out, is called The Water’s Dead. It's a police procedural set in the far north of New Zealand where you live.

Writing a police procedural a new game

That is a bit of a change for you, and it’s good to get in right at the beginning and talk a little bit about why you it made that.