Robin Baker

A young former English teacher, turned funeral director.

Knows death. Lives in Perth, Australia.

Killing Richard Dawson is his debut novel, and it's in good bookstores now.

Download a free extract of Killing Richard Dawson. Enjoy! 

See a video clip of Killing Richard Dawson on Vimeo.

And please tell us what you think.

Robin is currently finishing his 2nd novel, Chasing the Sun... a dark coming-of-age comedy about Feng Shui, exorcism, pet psychiatry, belief & mortality. Pantera Press publishes Chasing the Sun in 2011.

Interviews with Robin Baker

I've enjoyed writing since I was 8 years old. I started taking the craft seriously in high school and then studied Creative Writing full-time in 2000. (I also studied film, acting, social psychology, both ancient and contemporary philosophy, and later completed a post-graduate degree in secondary teaching).

It was at university when I started Killing Richard Dawson , as well as many short stories and scripts, some of which were produced by the university's screen academy. Author John Harman selected one of my short stories to be part of an anthology of young Western Australian writers, but funding for the project fell through.

I began teaching high school English, but now, at 27, I'm a funeral director. It is certainly eye-opening and gives the basis for some of the macabre humour which finds its way into my work!

I’m fascinated by the darker places of life, and its undercurrents. When I was writing Killing Richard Dawson, the media was saturated with sanitised Gen Y narratives and I wanted to write something more accurate and representative of their experience.

I created a protagonist who’s a social misfit, someone self-centred, who doesn’t care about anything or anyone, a combination of light and dark forces. The tricky part was to get the reader to sympathise with an essentially unlikeable but believable character and that’s where the book’s tension lies.

I'm currently finishing my second novel, Chasing the Sun, which Pantera Press is publishing in 2012.

Click here for another interview - in X-Press Magazine

Click here for another interview - in The Sun-Herald newspaper

What people are saying about Killing Richard Dawson...

Nick Earls, award-winning author

‘…somehow doesn’t miss a beat, all the way to an ending that’ll knock you sideways.’

Booktopia Buzz

'A startling, original  voice on the crime scene... TO DIE FOR... a new crime writer you simply have to read.'

Bookseller + Publisher magazine 

‘...takes the reader on an unsettling journey… A truly gripping read.’

Reader’s comment

‘Catcher in the Rye meets Dexter…a coming-of-age tale injected with black humour.’

Australian Literary Review  

“In Killing Richard Dawson, Robin Baker’s narrator is so unpretentiously sincere about his desperation to avoid pain that I was grinning from the first lines... The pleasure of the novel is its darkly hilarious knack for capturing the lethargic insights of Gen Y, in a voice that Baker claims was an antidote to the teen television series Dawson’s Creek. Baker’s biggest fans will probably belong to the same generation, but anyone who enjoys the deadpan honesty of a smart teenager would be won over.” (Tim Kennedy Hanna)

Fancy Goods

‘...such an intriguing book I couldn't put it down... this book is excellent. 5 out of 5 stars.’ (Andrew Wrathall)

The Courier Mail

"...simmering, mysterious thriller... Baker's strangely compelling voice reels you in... surprising twists and hairpin bends... a compulsive read." (Gillian Bramley-Moore) 

The Sydney Morning Herald

"... a darkly comic story... Generation Y is often thought of as a generation with nothing to believe in. It's a Nietzschean approach to life with more sex, interesting pants and even fewer ideals. In this novel, one member of the generation is given something to believe in: killing Richard Dawson... The humour in Killing Richard Dawson is sporadic. The darkness is not.” (Emma Young) more>

The Weekend Australian, Review

"Killing Richard Dawson stitches the murderous sensibilities of television's anti-hero Dexter to Andrew McGahan's nihilistic slacker Gordon Buchanan, and plays its story out in a completely believable 21st-century suburban milieu. There may be a little too much Quentin Tarantino-like graphic violence thrown into the mix, but this is a surprisingly skilful first novel, promising a rosier future for [Robin] Baker than what is delivered to his unhappy protagonist." (Venero Armanno) more>

The Sun-Herald , The Age , WA Today and The Brisbane Times

"...a succession of soulless social engagements and increasingly unhinged behaviour... There are shades of American Psycho but with a distinctly Australian air of suburban ennui...an ambitious novel, full of ambiguity..." (Greg Hassall) more>