Cry Blue Murder

Cry Blue Murder

What makes someone vulnerable to becoming a victim of an online predator?

Cry Blue Murder is a thrilling crime novel about the dangers of social media and online communication.

A serial killer is preying on teenage girls in Melbourne. When Celia meets Alice at an online tribute for the killer's latest victim, Hallie, they quickly develop a friendship. Confiding their deepest thoughts and fears via email, Celia and Alice soon become extremely close. But is everyone who they seem?

Cry Blue Murder is a haunting and poignant psychological thriller that pushes the boundaries of trust and betrayal, life and death.


Kim Kane was born in London in a bed bequeathed by Wordsworth for -... a writer, a dancer or a poet'. Despite this auspicious beginning, she went on to practise law. Kim's picture book Family Forest was shortlisted for the 2011 Children's Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Awards. The Vegetable Ark was a 2011 CBCA Notable Book in two categories. Kim's first novel, Pip: the story of Olive, won the 2008 Barbara Ramsden Award and was shortlisted for the 2009 Australian Book Industry Awards and the Speech Pathology Australian awards. Kim lives with her family in Melbourne. She writes whenever and wherever she can.


Marion Roberts is a professional fiction and corporate writer based in Melbourne. She has published two novels for young readers following the misguided adventures of eleven-year-old Sunny Hathaway. Cry Blue Murder is her first YA novel, co-written with Kim Kane. Marion studied Professional Writing and Editing at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and has a Masters Degree in Creative Writing from the University of Melbourne. She is currently furthering her studies in Performance Writing at the Victorian College of the Arts.


Cry Blue Murder
University of Queensland Press
Authors: Kim Kane and Marion Roberts
ISBN: 9780702239267
RRP: $19.95

Interview with Kim Kane and Marion Roberts

Question: What do you enjoy about writing young adult fiction?

Kim Kane and Marion Roberts: We both are really interested in exploring 'voice' and voices of young people. Although writing young adult fiction is a first for us both, the thing that drew us to it is actually more about crafting a good, plausible story. The benefit of writing for a slightly older audience is that we could explore ideas and use language which may not be appropriate for a younger audience.

Question: Was their one specific case that inspired the story of Cry Blue Murder?

Kim Kane and Marion Roberts: No! We spent a tremendous about of time crafting a crime which was creepy without being sexually explicit, with a feasible MO and also visual.


Question: What do you hope readers take away from this book?

Kim Kane and Marion Roberts: We wanted to write a creepy thriller so we hope readers believe in and are engaged by the characters and want to keep turning the pages of the novel to see what happens...


Question: Can you talk about the advantages of co-writing Cry Blue Murder?

Kim Kane and Marion Roberts: There is no way either of us could have come up with a novel like this by ourselves. The fact that we were writing together and needed to be following the same path meant that we had to plot thoroughly which is an advantage for the type of book we were writing. It meant we went through an editing process before we got to an editor and our ideas were really probed by two minds which ironed out many of the initial plot problems (we hope!).


Question: What was the most difficult part of co-writing Cry Blue Murder?

Kim Kane and Marion Roberts: We were very constrained by availability. Marion has teenage kids and a job, Kim has young twins and we both have other projects so it meant we were operating on completely different timetables. Editing was also difficult - not because our vision was remarkably different (for the most part we were surprisingly aligned) but because we were working to tight timeframes the hardest thing was finding the time to do so.


Interview by Brooke Hunter