We caught up with author R A Spratt to ask about Friday Barnes 13, the latest instalment in her bestselling detective series that follows Friday Barnes in New York City. Read on for a Q&A.
What’s new for Friday Barnes in this latest instalment?
Ingrid and Binky are kidnapped. Ian is very broody. And Friday gets caught up in a spate of crimes at New York’s best collection of rare manuscripts – The Morgan Library.
What can you tell us about the mystery in this book?
I can’t tell you anything, that would spoil the book and I don’t want you to be angry with me. But rest assured there will be intrigue, flirting, a dramatic chase, a variety of ingenious criminals and a love square (like a love triangle only more complicated).
Friday Barnes 13 is set in New York City – why did you choose this setting?
I chose New York because I’ve been to New York many times. It’s easier to write a book when you’ve been to the location. It means you can fill in lots of little details about the sounds, sights and smells. It’s hard to research smells over the internet.
Can you tell us about some of the new characters in this book?
This books centres on the staff working at the Morgan Library. That includes a group of troubled, obnoxious and overly intelligent interns. Their boss, who is a lovable but deeply eccentric museum director dedicated to shaking down rich widows for donations. There’s also a grumpy 60s rock star and more billionaires than you can poke a stick at. As well as two elderly gardeners with violent tempers.
What’s next for Friday?
I’m not sure. I had intended to set book 14 in Singapore because I was in Singapore earlier this year and had some ideas for locations and plots. But the way things leave off in book 13 means Friday might be heading to Denmark instead. I’ll have to set another book in Singapore.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
R A Spratt was born in the UK and lived in Dursley, Gloucestershire – a town immortalised by Harry Potter’s deeply unpleasant relatives – until she was two years old. Then, like many ambitious English people cursed with regional accents so strong no other British person can take them seriously, her family moved to Australia.
The tedium of growing up in the western suburbs of Sydney was fertiliser to the growth of R.A.’s imagination. The only thing for a kid to do was get on a bicycle and go to the library, so R A Spratt did just that. Once there, she read everything, devouring the books of Arthur Ransome, Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl, Robin Klein and Judy Blume, and audiotapes of Shakespeare productions and Sherlock Holmes dramatisations. And so, her young mind was formed, and set on the path of becoming the extraordinary author she is today.
Now based in Bowral NSW, she’s the bestselling writer of dozens of absurd and witty books including Friday Barnes, The Adventures of Nanny Piggins, The Peski Kids and the Shockingly and Astonishingly Good Stories collections. Her podcast, Bedtime Stories with R.A. Spratt, has had over 5 million downloads and connects R.A. with story-lovers across the globe.
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