Hanging out with Alan Carter

Originally hailing from Sunderland, award-winning crime writer Alan Carter was a filmmaker and film editor before he became an author. His latest book, Marlborough Man, is inspired by his secluded home at the northern-most end of New Zealand. Alan intended to write the fourth book in his Cato Kwong series, but the isolated, dramatic landscape of the Marlborough Sounds convinced him otherwise.

What‘s on your to-be-read pile?

I’ve got Mark Brandi’s Wimmera, Kim Scott’s Taboo, Jock Serong’s On the Java Ridge, and an unfinished Barkskins by Annie Proulx awaiting my attention along with several re-readings of PhD novels such as The Year of Living Dangerously, Beat Not the Bones, Ghost Money and Funeral in Eden. When’s a man meant to find time to swim, chop down trees and write?

Is there a book both you and your kids enjoy?

All the kids are grown up now but my youngest, Liam, enjoyed The Lorax and Wombat Stew, and later we’d compare notes on Adrian McKinty’s Sean Duffy series. I often run some of my own writing past him too (he likes DI Hutchens behaving badly).

Where‘s the best place to read in the world?

Flat out on the couch with the sun streaming through the window – any couch, any window.