An unsolved mystery that rattled 1950s Melbourne is the inspiration for a new novel by a Yarraville writer.
Janice Simpson’s first crime novel, Murder in Mt Martha, began its journey as a non-fiction investigation into the discovery of the brutally mutilated body of 14-year-old Shirley May Collins on the Mornington Peninsula in 1953.
Police conducted a massive manhunt and interviewed hundreds of people but the case remained unsolved.
“I actually began writing about it in a non-fiction way, but realised I wasn’t making any headway so I let my imagination run with it,” Simpson said. “It needed to be fictionalised.”
Murder in Mt Martha carries readers back and forth between the events of 1953 and today when the central character, Nick Szabo, comes across an old newspaper clipping and begins to dig deeper into the case.
“It got massive coverage because it was so brutal and a 14-year-old girl,” Simpson said. “They never charged anyone.”
Simpson said to get into the mind of the murderer for her “crime noir” she spent a lot of time researching sociopaths and psychopaths.
“It’s not a whodunit in the traditional sense, you find out early who it is,” she said.
“The point is finding out how this could happen.”
Murder in Mt Martha is a change of direction from Simpson’s previous books, which include a travel memoir about her bicycle trip from Paris to Istanbul (Let Sleeping Dogs Lie) and a book about the singles industry (All the Good Ones Aren’t Taken).
Murder in Mt Martha is available via www.hybridpublishers.com.au
