Michael Robotham

Last updated

Michael Robotham
Michael Robotham 2014.jpg
Michael Robotham in 2014 at Mosman Library Service
Born (1960-11-09) 9 November 1960 (age 63)
Casino, New South Wales, Australia
LanguageEnglish
Years active1975–
Notable works Life or Death
Notable awardsThe CWA Gold Dagger, 2015, 2020

Michael Robotham (born 9 November 1960) is an Australian crime fiction writer who has twice won the CWA Gold Dagger award for best novel and twice been shortlisted for the Edgar Award for best novel. His eldest child is Alexandra Hope Robotham, professionally known as Alex Hope, an Australian producer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist.

Contents

Career

Robotham was born in Casino, New South Wales, and went to school in Gundagai and Coffs Harbour. In February 1979 he began a journalism cadetship on the Sydney afternoon newspaper The Sun and later worked for The Sydney Morning Herald as a court reporter and police roundsman.

In 1986, he went to London, where he worked as a reporter and sub-editor for various UK national newspapers before becoming a staff feature writer on The Mail on Sunday in 1989. As a feature writer, Robotham was among the first people to view the letters and diaries of Tsar Nicholas II and his wife Empress Alexandra, unearthed in the Moscow State Archives in 1991. He also gained access to Stalin's Hitler files, which had been missing for nearly fifty years until a cleaner stumbled upon a cardboard box that had been misplaced and misfiled. The archives also revealed secrets about Rasputin and the nuclear accident at Chernobyl.

Robotham rose to become deputy features editor of The Mail on Sunday before resigning in May 1993 and accepting freelancing contracts with a number of British newspapers and magazines. In November 1993 he accepted his first ghostwriting commission, helping Nottingham social worker Margaret Humphreys to pen her autobiography, Empty Cradles. Published in 1994, it told the story of how she uncovered the truth behind Britain's Child Migrant Program, which saw more than 100,000 children sent abroad between 1850 and 1967, and established the Child Migrant Trust to reunite children with their families. In 2011 Empty Cradles became the basis of the film Oranges and Sunshine directed by Jim Loach and starring Emily Watson as Margaret Humphreys and Hugo Weaving and David Wenham as two of the child migrants.

Robotham went on to collaborate on fifteen "autobiographies" for people in the arts, politics, the military and sport. Twelve of these titles became Sunday Times bestsellers and sold more than 2 million copies. These books included the autobiographies of Spice Girl Geri Halliwell, British comedy actor Ricky Tomlinson and sixties musical legend Lulu.

In 1996 Robotham returned to Australia with his family and continued writing full-time. In 2002, a partial manuscript of his first novel, The Suspect, became the subject of a bidding war at the London Book Fair. It was later translated into 24 languages and sold over a million copies around the world. His books have since won, or been shortlisted for numerous awards including the UK and US

Six of his 'Joe O'Loughlin novels' have been turned into TV movies in Germany (situated in Hamburg), and an English-language TV series based on the first Joe O'Loughlin novel, The Suspect , began filming in October 2021 in London and Liverpool with Aidan Turner in the lead role, produced by World Production. His stand-alone novel The Secrets She Keeps was turned into a six-part TV series by Network 10 in Australia and became one of the most watched TV shows on BBC1 in 2020. A second series of The Secrets She Keeps began filming in Sydney in December 2021. Another standalone, Life or Death has been optioned for film in the US.

Awards and nominations

Personal

His eldest child is the ARIA- and APRA Award-winning songwriter, producer and musician Alex Hope.

Bibliography

Joseph O'Loughlin series

Cyrus Haven series

Stand-alone novels

Neben der Spur - Television film series Germany, ZDF [5]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karin Slaughter</span> American crime writer (born 1971)

Karin Slaughter is an American crime writer. She has written 24 novels, which have sold more than 40 million copies and have been published in 120 countries. Her first novel, Blindsighted (2001), was published in 27 languages and made the Crime Writers' Association's Dagger Award shortlist for "Best Thriller Debut" of 2001.

The Crime Writers' Association (CWA) is a specialist authors' organisation in the United Kingdom, most notable for its "Dagger" awards for the best crime writing of the year, and the Diamond Dagger awarded to an author for lifetime achievement. The Association also promotes crime writing of fiction and non-fiction by holding annual competitions, publicising literary festivals and establishing links with libraries, booksellers and other writer organisations, both in the UK such as the Society of Authors, and overseas. The CWA enables members to network at its annual conference and through its regional chapters as well as through dedicated social media channels and private website. Members' events and general news items are published on the CWA website, which also features Find An Author, where CWA members are listed and information provided about themselves, their books and their awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">R. J. Ellory</span> English thriller writer

Roger Jon Ellory is an English thriller writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Lovesey</span> British writer

Peter (Harmer) Lovesey, also known by his pen name Peter Lear, is a British writer of historical and contemporary detective novels and short stories. His best-known series characters are Sergeant Cribb, a Victorian-era police detective based in London, and Peter Diamond, a modern-day police detective in Bath.

The CWA International Dagger and beginning in 2019 as the Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger is an award given by the Crime Writers' Association for best translated crime novel of the year. The winning author and translator receives an ornamental Dagger at an award ceremony held annually.

The CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger is an annual award given by the British Crime Writers' Association for best thriller of the year. The award is sponsored by the estate of Ian Fleming.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ann Cleeves</span> British novelist (born 1954)

Ann Cleeves is a British mystery crime writer. She wrote the Vera Stanhope, Jimmy Perez, and Matthew Venn series, all three of which have been adapted into TV shows. In 2006 she won the Duncan Lawrie Dagger for her novel Raven Black, the first novel in the Jimmy Perez series.

Steve Hamilton is a mystery writer who is known for the Alex McKnight series. Apart from his Alex McKnight books, Hamilton has written Night Work and The Lock Artist. His works have won the Edgar Award, Shamus Award and Barry Award.

Kenneth Martin Edwards is a British crime novelist, whose work has won multiple awards including lifetime achievement awards for his fiction, non-fiction, short fiction, and scholarship in the UK and the United States. In addition to translations into various European languages, his books have been translated into Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese. As a crime fiction critic and historian, and also in his career as a solicitor, he has written non-fiction books and many articles. He is the current President of the Detection Club and in 2020 was awarded the Crime Writers' Association's Diamond Dagger, the highest honour in British crime writing, in recognition of the "sustained excellence" of his work in the genre.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adrian McKinty</span> Irish crime novelist and critic

Adrian McKinty is a Northern Irish writer of crime and mystery novels and young adult fiction, best known for his 2020 award-winning thriller, The Chain, and the Sean Duffy novels set in Northern Ireland during The Troubles. He is a winner of the Edgar Award, the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, the Macavity Award, the Ned Kelly Award, the Barry Award, the Audie Award, the Anthony Award and the International Thriller Writers Award. He has been shortlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger and the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière.

<i>Shatter</i> (novel) 2008 psychological thriller novel by Michael Robotham

Shatter is a 2008 psychological thriller novel written by the Australian author Michael Robotham.

This article presents a list of the historical events and publications of Australian literature during 2007.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mick Herron</span> British novelist

Mick Herron is a British mystery and thriller novelist. He is the author of the Slough House series, early novels of which have been adapted for the Slow Horses television series. He won the Crime Writers' Association 2013 Gold Dagger award for Dead Lions.

The CWA Historical Dagger is an annual award given by the British Crime Writers' Association to the author of the best historical crime novel of the year. Established in 1999, it is presented to a novel "with a crime theme and a historical background of any period up to 35 years before the current year".

<i>Life or Death</i> (novel) Book by Michael Robotham

Life or Death (2014) is a crime novel by Australian author Michael Robotham. It won the 2015 Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award. This is his first book to not involve either of his two main characters; Joe O'Loughlin and Vincent Ruiz.

Jane Harper is a British–Australian author known for her crime novels The Dry, Force of Nature and The Lost Man, all set in rural Australia.

<i>The Chain</i> (novel) 2019 novel by Adrian McKinty

The Chain is a 2019 novel written by Adrian McKinty.

Mike W. Craven is an English crime writer. He is the author of the Washington Poe series and the DI Avison Fluke series. In 2019 his novel The Puppet Show won the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chris Whitaker (author)</span> British author

Chris Whitaker is a British author known for his books Tall Oaks, All the Wicked Girls, We Begin at the End, and The Forevers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abir Mukherjee</span> Scottish-Bengali author

Abir Mukherjee is a British-Indian author best known for his crime novels. He wrote the Wyndham and Banerjee series set in the British Raj era in India.

References

  1. ""Michael Robotham beats Stephen King to win Britain's Gold Dagger crime-writing award"". The Age newspaper. 30 September 2015. Retrieved 30 September 2015.
  2. "Michael Robotham wins the 2020 Gold Dagger". The Booktopian. 23 October 2020. Retrieved 23 October 2020.
  3. Mitchinson, James, ed. (24 October 2020). "Australian crime writer shows Midas touch again with sdcond gold dagger in five years". The Yorkshire Post. p. 14. ISSN   0963-1496.
  4. "Robotham wins CWA Steel Dagger". Books+Publishing. 2 July 2020. Retrieved 9 July 2021.
  5. Neben der Spur at IMDb