Crime writer Marele Day talks to Mitchell Jordan about investigating a stranger-than-fiction mystery:
Q Your new memoir, Reckless, is a hybrid work of crime, memoir and meditations on grief following the death of your partner. How would you describe it?
A It’s Agatha Christie sets out to experience Eat, Pray, Love and ends up in Ocean’s Eleven. The book shifts back and forwards a bit but that’s the way memory goes. We don’t really live our lives in a straight line.
Q Much of the book deals with your friendship with a man called Jean Kay, who you meet after losing your partner. Who was Jean and what compelled you to write a book about him?
A I hitched a ride on Jean Kay’s boat, a catamaran, from Darwin to Singapore at the end of 1979, without knowing anything about him. But I did feel some sort of kinship with Jean. When I was a child, one of my favourite TV shows was Adventures in Paradise, about a guy who sailed his boat around the South Pacific having adventures. And when I stepped on Jean’s boat, he was sitting in the cockpit like the guy on TV was. I thought ‘Yes, this is a man that’s come from beyond the horizons.’ I felt that he’d lived a big life. And then on the boat I found out was travelling under a pseudonym and had hijacked a Pakistan Airlines plane in 1971 to get medical supplies to Bangladeshi refugees. Jean was going to let all the non-Pakistani passengers off in Beirut, but of course it didn’t get that far. He was apprehended, though he held the plane up for about seven hours and eventually the Red Cross did send medication to Bagladesh, so it wasn’t in vain. Then, in 1976 Jean was involved in a robbery of eight million Francs, worth about US$1.6 million. It was a heist where money was taken from the account of Marcel Dassault, a big aeronautical magnet, and one of the richest and most influential men in France. Jean was on the run from that crime when I met him, although I didn’t find that out until 30 years later when I paid a visit to France and met up with him.
Jean Kay (Image: supplied)
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Q Back in the 80s and 90s you wrote a mystery series featuring Claudia Valentine, a bold private investigator cracking cases in Sydney. In Reckless you fly to France and even Brazil looking for answers about your friend, Jean Kay and what really happened with the heist. Did you ever think that your life would be imitating art like this?
A No! I’ve already read my life once having lived it, and in my novels I want to go to unexplored territories. Brazil was not a destination I ever would have thought of because it has a reputation for being a little bit dangerous. But by then I was on a roll [with writing Reckless] and being, if you like, a bit reckless myself, I just thought: ‘I’ll go wherever I have to go for the story.’
Q Jean is no longer alive. What do you think he’d make of Reckless and knowing other people will now have access to his story?
A I think he would be happy with it as he was prepared to hand the story over to me to write and sent me newspaper clippings about him that weren’t always complimentary.
Jean only saw one piece of my writing of it; I sent him the scene where he’s concocting plans to rob the safe. He said, ‘Yes, bravo, I like your detail’, so in a way that did give me carte blanche for the rest.
I didn’t want to eulogise or make him into a hero, though. Jean was a writer and he would understand that you can’t do a rose-coloured glasses kind of job. If you want authenticity, you have to show the smooth skin and the warts.
Marele visiting Jean’s home in France (Image: supplied)
Q After publishing seven novels, Reckless is your first non-fiction book. How different was the experience of writing a memoir?
A I thought it would be easy because I didn’t have to make anything up, everything was there. The difficulty was being a private person, a low-discloser. The grief I write about in the book is quite mushy; even 45 years later, I can still burst into tears. So I imagined I was telling the story to one trusted reader, an old friend … and sometimes that friend was Jean.
Q Claudia Valentine is still remembered today, and in 2019 your novel, Lambs of God, was made into a mini-series over 20 years after its publication. How does it feel for you to know your work has had such longevity at a time when many books can disappear as soon as they’re released and our attention spans are becoming increasingly shorter?
Q I’m tremendously grateful. When I was approached about a TV series for Lambs of God, I thought ‘Let’s see how far this goes’ but they made it and it’s amazing. To know your writing is still remembered and slipped into people’s cultural references is not something a writer could ever take for granted.
Lambs of God was made into an acclaimed mini-series.
Q Some writers are disappointed at adaptations of their work, what did you think of Lambs of God?
A It really sticks closely to the atmosphere of the book. I met with the production company who asked what I did and didn’t want. I told them to keep the nun’s lifestyle and respect it. I went on-set, where they filmed the interiors at Fox Studios, Sydney, and it was amazing to see all the trouble they’d gone to – there were 100 people there. I felt a bit guilty they were taking it all so seriously!
Q There’s also a scene in Reckless where you need to do something courageous, and you hear the voice of Claudia egging you on. Do your characters always stay with you after the book is finished?
A Claudia does! Even after the four books were written, and the last one was published in 1994, it was set on the HSC reading list and I’d often be invited to schools to do talks. Claudia’s a taller, braver, alter ego who’s smarter with the one-liners than me.
Marele on Jean’s boat (Image: supplied)
Q Lastly, given your book title, what does living recklessly mean to you?
A I don’t want people to be irresponsible and endanger others, but take that step. Often, when you put your foot out, the step then appears. When you’re at the end of your life, what are you going to remember? Going to work every day or taking that trip to Brazil?
Reckless (Ultimo Press) is out now
