Kia ora and haere mai, welcome to the 238th instalment of author interview series, 9mm, which has been resurrected this year after largely going into hibernation in 2021-2023. Thanks for reading and sharing the 9mm series, and
in general (and my work elsewhere) over many years. I've had a lot of fun talking to some amazing crime writers and bringing their thoughts and stories to you.
Bergmoser has also written a couple of thriller Audible Originals, a follow-up to The Hunted (The Inheritance), and a standalone thriller, The Caretaker, which earlier this year was shortlisted for the 2024 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Novel. Watch the video above where he chats about his writing.
But for now, Gabriel Bergmoser becomes the latest author to stare down the barrel of 9mm.
Who is your favourite recurring crime fiction hero/detective?
I’m gonna cheat slightly, and say not a detective. Well, kind of a detective. Lecter is the go-to for me, and he does involve himself in solving crime. So I think you can make the case of him being a detective, but to me, he is, and remains, the greatest creation in all of crime fiction. And I think the fact that the character is so malleable that Thomas Harris's fiction can be interpreted in vastly different ways by either Mads Mickelson's Hannibal or Brian Cox's Hannibal, or Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal, but yet always still be the same character. It speaks to the malleability of the character, but also the strength of the character that can sustain such vastly clashing interpretations.
What was the very first book you remember reading and really loving, and why?
The thing that I remember reading that really, really struck and caught me when I was younger, it wasn't just one book, it was it was the Animorphs series, which was huge in the 90s, and in retrospect, I was probably a little bit young for it, because I read sort of a smattering of the different books. You know, it was one of those scholastic series where there was 62 books in the end. And there were always these moments in that series that were so seared into my brain that I always remembered this particular feeling that would always resonate when I thought about it over the years. And it wasn't until I reread the whole series during lockdown that I realized that this was a children's series that delved into some of the darkest, most unsettling, most challenging, moral and philosophical conundrums you can imagine. And that as a kid, I hadn't understood it, but it had completely shaped my own sensibilities and my own sort of attraction to genre stories that are kind of heightened but really grapple with some dark territory at the same time. I mean, I loved Animorphs as a kid. I fell in love with it even more rereading as an adult. I think it is one of the most underrated achievements in fiction for children that's ever been written. And I don't think I would be who I am without it.
Before your debut crime novel, what else had you written (if anything) unpublished manuscripts, short stories, articles?
Prior to The Hunted, which was my debut published crime novel, there were two main projects that had characterized my life. I'd written a few plays here and there, and some short stories, but the two main things where I had this one attempt at a crime novel that I've been trying to write since high school, and I wrote it over and over and over and over and over again, and it kept getting very close to being published, or getting very close to kind of breaking through. And it wasn't until that had its kind of most emphatic rejection in 2018 that I kind of finally put it away and I moved on to The Hunted. And that ended up being the thing that broke through for me. But the other one, I actually did have three published books before The Hunted, published by an indie publisher in Melbourne, which was a YA trilogy about a time traveling journalist, Boone Shepard, and it was much more sort of quirky and adventurous and written for younger readers, and could not have been more different to The Hunted. So those were sort of the two things that always characterized my life. But it wasn't until I sort of moved into really explicitly crime thriller stuff, that my career really started to move.
Outside of writing and writing-related activities (book events, publicity), what do you really like to do, leisure and activity-wise?
Oh, I wish I could say was more interesting than hanging out with my friends and hanging out with my dogs. Like, I live down on St Kilda in Melbourne. I can see the beach from my window. And, I mean, there's just such a litany of great cafes and bars and restaurants down here, and a lot of my friends live in the same area. So there's just never a hell of lot of reason to leave St Kilda, if I'm being completely honest, like, unless I'm out doing school talks or book events, I'm pretty much relegated this one suburb, working from home or any of the local establishments and hanging out with friends, hanging out with my dogs, going to the movies, reading books, that's kind of it. I wish my life was more interesting, but it's truly not. I do go skiing in winter, very badly.
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A waxwork of notorious bush ranger and folk hero
Ned Kelly and his armour suit at Madame Tussauds |
What is one thing that visitors to your hometown should do, that isn't in the tourist brochures, or perhaps they wouldn’t initially consider?Okay, so my hometown, Mansfield, it's known for being sort of a gateway to the ski fields. It's right at the foot of Mount Buller, which is why I grew up skiing a lot and everything. And during summer, it's very famous for hiking and for sitting by the river and fishing and boating and that kind of thing. But to me, one of the coolest things about Mansfield is that it's very much a key location in one of Australia's most well-known historical stories, which is Ned Kelly, the outlaw bush ranger who wore armour and basically fought against the police and everything in the 1800s.
For those who are unaware of that story, the three policemen who Ned Kelly killed, which is what kind of kickstarted, what they call the Kelly outbreak, came from Mansfield and are buried in Mansfield. And in the central town there was a huge monument to the three of them that I kind of grew up seeing almost every day. And it wasn't until I learned about the history that I realized what that was, and then went to the graveyard and visited their graves and everything. And the more you start delving into it, the more you see how many locations in Mansfield and the surrounding areas were really a part of that history. As somebody who was deeply fascinated by that history and would love to write a book about it one day, growing up in that area, sort of being completely immersed in it, around every corner there's a location that's key to that story, it was absolutely fascinating. I think if you have even the slightest interest in Australian history, then Mansfield is a must stop location.
If your life was a movie, which actor could you see playing you?
Oh, God, I don't even know what to say to that. Because the question where it's sort of like, if you choose someone too good looking, then everybody goes, “Oh, yeah, sure thing, mate”. But if you choose someone who isn't, then everybody goes, “Oh, don't be so self-deprecating”, or whatever. So it's not something I've ever, ever thought about … I'm gonna fudge it slightly. Like, if there's ever a movie made about my life, I hope that I'm cast as this much more intense, brooding, interesting, tortured artist character, than I actually am. So in that case, cast Adam Driver and just pretend I was like that. Like, it's not remotely what my actual personality is like, but if that can be the public persona that I can create, and if somebody like him can play me, then let's go with that. Yeah.
Of your writings, which is your favourite or a bit special to you for some particular reason, and why? Look, any of the books, you can make an argument for almost any of them for why they might be special to me, but the one that really does mean the most to me - and there was a point early on where I'd sort of thought to myself that if my career stalled out early, as long as I published this book, I'd be happy - and that one, incidentally, is The True Colour of a Little White Lie, which was my YA book that came out right after The Hunted, and sort of slipped under the radar like it was, it was during Covid. It was hard to promote it properly, and, you know, it didn't, it didn't really make much of an impact, or much of a splash or anything. But it's the book that is most directly taking a lot from my own life, my own experiences, and, I guess, my own values as well.
And you know, there were two questions my publisher asked me when that book was acquired. One was, is this book autobiographical? To which the answer is largely, yes. Then the second question was, are the lessons the main character learns in this book, the lessons that you wish you'd learned at that age? And I was like, absolutely yes. That's true as well. So it's personal for a lot of reasons, and I do still, you know, I've been incredibly fortunate my career. But if there was one thing that I kind of wish could have gone slightly differently, it would be that True Colour had maybe been read by more people. But as it stands, I'm still intensely proud of that book, and it still is probably my favourite of all my books, and I see it remaining so for quite a while.
What was your initial reaction, and how did you celebrate, when you were first accepted for publication? Or when you first saw your debut story in book form on a bookseller’s shelf?
So when The Hunted was picked up for publication, I still remember that morning. I met a few different publishers who were interested, and there'd been talk of offers being made, but nothing had come through. And I remember there was this morning where I woke up and it was like 5.30 am, or something like that, earlier than I would get up, and I opened my phone and I had this email from my agent that had come through overnight, and it just said, What the fuck? And it had HarperCollins's offer attached. And I remember opening it and without kind of going into extreme details or whatever, it was life changing money for a two-book deal. It was something that it was literally that dream come true moment, that I hadn't given up ... So I still remember just sort of sitting out there in the dark as the sun was coming up, just staring at my phone, just reading over the offer again and again and again and being like, how is this real?
And then it was, like, two days later, I think, I met up with some friends in the city, and we had a drink to kind of have a minor celebration, but didn't have anything planned. And then they were like, we should go to this restaurant tonight and get something to eat and everything. And I was like, Nah, I was just staying here and have a couple drinks. It's fine. You're all relaxing and everything. And they were like really adamant to get to this restaurant. And finally they convinced me, and so we went off to the restaurant, and it was in this different suburb, and I didn't really want to go. Then they're like, oh, we’ll just stop by your place quickly on the way back. It turns out they planned a surprise party for me, and my parents had come down, and my family had come down, and all these people and everything, and I'd been completely oblivious. I’d been just like, oh, let's just stay here and relax, I don't want to go for a fancy dinner or anything, but meanwhile, everyone's waiting at the house, being like, where is he? Hurry up.
I mean, that was overwhelming, and really special. Like, for the rest of my life and the rest of my career, I'll never forget that exact period, even before The Hunted came out, because when The Hunted did come out, it was during Covid, and so it was still very exciting and everything, but it didn't feel as much of a whirlwind as those first days and weeks after the book was acquired and everything that came with that. That was just one of the most incredible times in my life. And I'll never, ever forget that.
What is the strangest or most unusual experience you have had at a book signing, author event, or literary festival?
There was a book signing I did once where this guy came in and he asked for me to sign his book and everything, and he just seemed really normal and stuff. But this was early on, so a lot of people who I met at signings would be people who I knew. I think it was a book launch this was, and this guy came in. I didn't know who this guy was, and he asked the book to be signed and everything. And then, like, later that night I got, via my contact form, this, like this, like almost 1000 word long stream of consciousness email from him talking about how he'd read the book and he found the book disappointing, and then when he met me in person, like he'd realized I was a human being, because he'd seen that I was nervous at the book signing, and how that inspired him to sort of realize that authors are human beings as well, and it just went on and on and on, but it started to just get really weird and really intimate and really strange after a while.
And like, I knew who he was, because he mentioned the brief exchange that we'd had, but I just remember getting to this point being like how do you extrapolate that much analysis from the brief exchange of us signing a book and me being a bit nervous about it? I remember asking a friend later on, is this normal? And he was just like, I think this guy is on acid in a bathtub, writing this out to you, but, yeah, it's just like, in one way or another, this might be sort of a roundabout way to arrive at this, but it does sort of shine a slight light on, I guess, the discrepancy between, your self-perception at those events, or your self-perception of your work, and the perception that readers can have of your work. I mean, that would be one of the strangest things ever happened to me, because the more I read this email, just the more insanely self-conscious I became, because every little tick or every little detail of how I'd acted that night had been analysed and taken apart as part of this treatise that he'd written about how that had taught him something about himself. It was simultaneously flattering and unsettling.
Kia ora, Gabriel, we appreciate you having a chat with Crime Watch.
