POPULAR WA author Fleur McDonald has released her latest novel Fool’s Good, which goes in a different direction to her previous offerings.
Fool’s Good was developed after the Esperance scribe completed extensive interviews with detectives involved in stock crime.
It is based around the character of detective Dave Burrows who was posted to the remote goldfields town of Barrabine.
Dave was featured in Fleur’s previous books and after talking with publishers Allen and Unwin, it was decided that Dave should have a series of his own.
“It’s a bit heavier on the crime side of things,” Fleur said.
Fool’s Gold dates back to 1997 when Dave was a newly-badged detective who was keen to join the elite stock stock.
Fleur said he was forced to investigate reports of a mysterious late night trespassing, a missing person, guns being drawn on strangers, and a local prospector who phones in with horrific news that could hold the key to everything.
When doing her research on the latest novel, Fleur spent time with people involved in stock crime investigations and singled out two of them.
The first was detective Dave Byrne who is based in Perth.
“He helped me out with the character of Dave Burrows and also introduced me to detective inspector Mick Dowie from Toowoomba.”
After spending time with him in Queensland the pair struck up an alliance and Fleur now takes the message of farm and cyber safety to everyone she speaks to at various events.
She said the information gathered from the two detectives was “incredible” and helped make the story more authentic when writing about the crimes in the book.
Fleur said when framing certain parts of the book she was able to send the story to Mick to ensure it sounded legitimate.
She said the character of Dave was an approachable one.
When writing the book she had to remember it was set in 1997 – back in an era where there were limited mobile phones and phone coverage – and she had to picture the characters using fax machines with rolls of shiny paper.
As part of the research Fleur also spent time in WA’s Goldfields, talking to people around Kalgoorlie and Ora Banda.
“I got some really good back stories as well,” she said.
She said it was a lot easier to imagine life in a remote area when living out there for a while.
“Sometimes when I was out there camping by myself I was aware that I was a woman on her own.
“It was not hard to imagine how vulnerable people out there on their own could be.”
The launch of Fool’s Gold coincides with the launch of her not-for-profit website ‘Breaking the Silence’ that has been designed to help rural women get the support they need when facing domestic violence in under-resourced areas.
The site focuses on Esperance, where Fleur lives, but there are plans to expand it to Albany in coming weeks.
“Hopefully by the end of the year we will have all of WA covered,” Fleur said.
“And hopefully next year we can start to build on that nationally.”
Living in a rural area and realising country women don’t have a lot of resources at their fingertips when looking for help in domestic violence situations, Fleur decided to fund the project herself.
“If you have been in a domestic violence situation and you need to find help it is really difficult to find the information you need in country areas.”
“My research took me to 10 different websites to get practical help.”
More information: go to breakingthesilence.com.au
