In his day job as managing editor of television and video for ABC News, Tim Ayliffe spends his hours dissecting global affairs, from terrorism, to defence matters, to Australia’s place in the grand scheme of things.
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With his debut novel, The Greater Good, Ayliffe has written a thriller straight from the headlines.
“I’m pretty lucky really, that I can spend every day researching for my books,” he laughs.
John Bailey is a battered war correspondent, dealing with demons from his past, caught up in a crime that runs deeper than it appears. A prostitute is found murdered, her clients have ties to the military and the government, throw in the CIA and the Chinese and you have a story that Ayliffe could well be running in the 7pm news slot.
“I find that with fiction you can get a lot closer to the truth than you can with non-fiction,” he says, enjoying the process of taking a story where he wants it to go.
“You can really get into a story, get inside the rooms, get inside people's heads, expose the lies, the real motivations.
“I love the freedom fiction gives me to do that.”
It was a real-life conversation with a source that gave Ayliffe, who’s been a journalist for close on 20 years, the idea for The Greater Good.
“I was talking with a United States official who asked me whether I could ever see the day where Australia would turn its back on the US in favour of a closer relationship with China,” he says.
“That got me thinking if that was to happen how would that unfold? This book is full of a lot of ‘what ifs’.
“It’s set in the real world but there's this big overarching geopolitical aspect to it, about the world we live in now, and where the tensions lie. This idea that Australia is caught in the middle between the US and China.”
On one hand, Ayliffe believes that very position gives authors scope to write the nation as an international player, and it also opens up setting the story on home soil.
“But I think we’re living in a much more international world these days and readers are looking for a good story wherever it is set,” he says.
“You only have to look at the success of Nordic noir over the past decade and closer to home Jane Harper’s The Dry really put Australia as a setting on the map.”
He wanted The Greater Good to be an international book set in Australia, to give readers a real sense of the place. Sydney is as much a character in the book as the people.
“I love Sydney and I hate Sydney and I think that's what a lot of people would say about the place,” Ayliffe says.
“There's a line in there somewhere about Sydney being a bullshitter's paradise and that’s so true.
“It’s a very visually beautiful city but there's a lot that lies beneath. I’m happy to look at the negatives.”
Ayliffe has worked hard on character development. He’s secured a three-book deal with Simon & Schuster and he wanted to make sure readers would return because they were invested in the characters.
“I wanted the other characters to not only help explain Bailey but to be big characters themselves.
“Sharon Dexter was a joy to write,” he says of the policewoman leading the investigation who just happens to be a former lover of Bailey.
“She's such a strong woman who has a great bullshit detector, she doesn't get pushed around, she's tough, she's a great foil for Bailey.
“In many ways they’ve got such a complicated love story but Bailey is a really complicated guy.
“He's lovable, he's brilliant, he's hopeless, he's damaged, sometimes you'll laugh with him and then you want to slap him and then go and have a beer with him. He's that kind of guy.”
Ayliffe, 39, grew up on the Northern Beaches of Sydney, and lives there now with his wife and young family. He enjoys cycling and surfing and laments the state of Australian rugby union. Rugby fans will enjoy his references to places such as Moore Park throughout the book.
“Rugby’s not in a great place at the moment, I think I’m one of the last rugby diehards left in the country,” he says.
While our rugby game might be struggling, Ayliffe’s arrival on the thriller scene has only boosted our standing.
