Robert Murphy – News reporter and author talks about being respectful to true crime

Robert Murphy has worked as a news reporter for many years. Over the last decade or so, Robert followed the tragic story of Melanie Road. Melanie was murdered in Bath in 1984, after a year long enquiry with 94 arrests being made, no-one was charged. Then in 2009, Detective Superintendent Julie MacKay found something that changed everything.

Julie has co-written the story with Robert. We talk about how that worked, how he discovered every facet of the story, and moved that into a plot. You can hear how much thought they gave to the standards of genre fiction, when dealing with true crime and peoples lives – how much can you manipulate the story to be gripping and thrilling, when you’re talking about such a tragic tale?

We discuss how he organises a full-time creative job, with a creative hobby, and what his home life is like with a partner who also writes… and works in TV news.

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