Before I became a novelist, I spent ten years as a ghostwriter, collaborating with politicians, pop stars, psychologists, soldiers, adventurers and actors as they penned their autobiographies.
Many of these projects were done in secret and my name didnโt appear on the jacket or in the acknowledgements. Occasionally, I received a line thanking me for โputting my papers in orderโ or โcorrecting my spellingโ. Others were more generous, saying they couldnโt have written the book without me or indeed dedicating the book to me.
The challenge of ghostwriting is to capture the subjectโs voice so perfectly that nobody, not even their closest friend, can recognise my fingerprints on the manuscript. I did six times for women, learning the differences between a male and female voice.
Nowadays, I write psychological thrillers, many featuring a female lead or first-person narrator. My newest novel is no exception. THE WHITE CROW is told through the eyes of Philomena McCarthy, a young, ambitious police officer, who has defied the odds to follow her dream because her father and uncles are notorious London gangsters.
More of that later but first let me explain my experience as a literary cross-dresser. I am a sixty-plus, married father of three children, balding, bulging, and growing hair in places I never did before. I have worked all over the world as a reporter and feature writer, but my greatest challenge as a writer has always been capturing a womanโs voice.
As a ghostwriter I have written for six women, including Geri Halliwell of the Spice Girls and the sixties pop star, Lulu. And as a fiction writer, I have created a troubled teenage girl (Evie Cormac), a young Anglo-Indian police officer (Alisha Barba) and a woman faking her pregnancy (Agatha Fyfle).
Writing from a female perspective still terrifies me because women are the greatest readers of fiction, including crime, and if I get it wrong, they will be quick to tell me.
So how did I do it?
Well, firstly, I live with women. I have been married for nearly forty years and raised daughters to adulthood. In our household there is just me and the dog and weโve both been spayed.
Secondly, I do my research. When I wrote THE SECRETS SHE KEEPS โ told from the perspective of two pregnant woman โ I spent months eavesdropping on motherโs groups and reading mummy blogs. I then showed the novel to every woman I knew โ old, young, married, unmarried, with children and without. I wanted to know if there was a single sentence that didnโt resonate or ring true โ something that would expose me as a bloke pretending to be a woman.
I knew I was on the right track, when my wife read the manuscript and said: โMy girlfriends are going to think you are the most sensitive New Age man, with the most astonishing insight into the way women think and feel, but just remember, I know the truth.โ
Vivien also had to come to terms with the fact I was spending in my writing room, having an affair with another woman. Occasionally, when weโre out to dinner, sheโll see my eyes glaze over and kick me under the table saying, โYouโre with her, arenโt you?โ
My latest โaffairโ is with Philomena McCarthy, the protagonist and narrator of THE WHITE CROW.
On police patrol one night Phil discovers a barefoot child dressed in pyjamas, wandering the streets. Taking Daisy home, she uncovers the aftermath of a deadly home invasion. Meanwhile, three miles away a prominent jeweller is sitting in his ransacked store, wearing a bomb vest. Millions are missing.
These two crimes are linked and all of the evidence points to Philโs father, Edward McCarthy as being responsible. Her two worlds are colliding, trapping her in the middle of a vicious gang war that will threaten her career, her new marriage and everyone she loves.
I love the dynamic between Phil and her family. And I think she might be hanging around, although I havenโt told my wife yet. At least my affair is out in the open.
Two times Gold Dagger winning and twice Edgar short-listed author Michael Robotham was born in Australia in November 1960 and grew up in small country towns that had more dogs than people and more flies than dogs. He escaped in 1979 and became a cadet journalist on an afternoon newspaper in Sydney.
For the next fourteen years he wrote for newspapers and magazines in Australia, Britain and America. As a senior feature writer for the UKโs Mail on Sunday he was among the first people to view the letters and diaries of Czar Nicholas II and his wife Empress Alexandra, unearthed in the Moscow State Archives in 1991. He also gained access to Stalinโs Hitler files, which had been missing for nearly fifty years until a cleaner stumbled upon a cardboard box that had been misplaced and misfiled.
In 1993 he quit journalism to become a ghostwriter, collaborating with politicians, pop stars, psychologists, adventurers and showbusiness personalities to write their autobiographies. Twelve of these non-fiction titles were bestsellers with combined sales of more than 2 million copies.
His partially completed first novel, a psychological thriller called THE SUSPECT, caused a bidding war at the London Book Fair in 2002. Soon afterwards it was chosen by the worldโs largest consortium of book clubs as only the fifth โInternational Book of the Monthโ, making it the top recommendation to 28 million book club members in fifteen countries.
The White Crow by Michael Robotham is published by Scribner on July 1, 2025
