Author R&R with Russell Wate

Russell lives in the UK, with his wife of 43 years Deborah, and their pride and joy are their eight grandchildren. He spent over thirty years as a police officer. Most of those years as a detective and most of those years as a senior homicide detective. He is best known internationally for his work on the murder of two 10 year old girls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. He is also well known for his work on developing in the UK and across the world, the police and the multi-agency response to the investigation of child deaths. He received an honor from the late Queen Elizabeth II for his work as a detective. He is academically a criminologist and his doctorate thesis was ‘Investigating child deaths the balanced approach between sensitivity and the investigative mindset.’ Today all of his professional work revolves around the safeguarding of children and vulnerable adults, carrying out reviews into their tragic deaths.

Russell has written five books in the DCI McFarlane crime mystery series, including his latest, Getting Away with Murder. When celebrated British violinist Arthur Barrington is found dead in his Vienna hotel room, a room he was sharing with his own father, the Austrian police are left scrambling. Was it an accident? Did he somehow take his own life? Or did someone kill him? With Arthur being a British citizen, and not much to go on, the Austrian police call in the help of DCI Sandy McFarlane from the Foreign Office to help them investigate this young man’s death. As Sandy digs deeper, the investigation takes a dark turn, leading him not only through the streets of Vienna but also back to his home turf and the quaint country lanes of Stamford, England. Will he be able to patch together this twisted case? Or will this be the one that finally stumps the infamous detective?

Russell stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about researching and writing the book:

Because I was/am a homicide detective writing about the investigation parts of my novels come to me as second nature. However, there are always new techniques being developed that I need to keep on top of and I am luckily able to do this as I still carry out reviews into mostly child but also adult domestic murders. The techniques that are changing most frequently are those digital ones. The speed of change of modern technology and use of AI is a constant challenge for me to make sure, what I really try to achieve in my fiction books, that of authenticity of the investigation. Working with those senior detectives on these murders helps me to do this.

Alfred Lord Tennyson the Victorian poet said, ‘It is better have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.’ He wrote those words about a close friend of his Arthur Hallam whom he met at Trinity College in Cambridge, England. Arthur died as a 22 year old in a hotel room in Vienna in 1833. I thought 22 year old’s are not meant to die and I wondered what really happened to him. So, I set the story in modern times to ensure I could use all of the investigative techniques that I knew.

Off to Vienna I then went to carry out my research, because for me the feeling of ‘Place,’ also being authentic is so important to me. I don’t in my novels make up imaginary places, they are all the real places and real streets and landmarks. People often comment to me that they went and visited a certain town or place after reading about them in my novels, which please me greatly.

A key piece of research that took longer for this novel was getting my head around the structure of the Austrian Police Service and the law and techniques there, as they are different to those in the UK. Internet research was a key part to this for me but also finding a connection there to test out certain ideas on what could and couldn’t be feasible.

I have been told that all of the research was worthwhile and while the books and this one are an easy and entertaining read, the intricacies of the investigation reviewers find are very interesting. For me this is what makes my novels different to others in the genre as I take the reader for a walk with me in a homicide detectives shoes.

 

You can learn more about Russell Wate via his website and follow him on LInkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook. Getting Away with Murder is available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Bookshop.org, Waterstones, and Cranthorpe and Millner.