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Interview

Lea Scott, author of The Ned Kelly Game

Lea Scott talks about her other life as an accountant working in insolvency, and dealing with corporate crime...

READERSVOICE.COM: Can you describe what might happen in the sorts of insolvency cases you’ve dealt with as an accountant?

LEA SCOTT: I worked in Insolvency in the height of the Skase and Bond days and they were very busy and dare I say exciting times.

On the whole, everything went smoothly but we always took security guards with us on the first day of a takeover on the off chance that something went wrong.

One time I recall we even took guards and rottweiler dogs to a rural location. But despite precautions, there were invariably cases that got a little out of control.

Briefly, here are a few: My group had a gun pulled on us by a large Maori employee on the second day of a takeover. The business owner managed to talk him down.

While in another room my partner was physically confronted by a well-built Greek franchise owner who threatened to ‘beat his head in’. I had the phone in my hand ready to call the police, but he managed to settle him down.

I had to take possession of some vehicles from a family business, and the son phoned and threatened to firebomb the cars and come in and ‘put me up against a wall’. The same person was removed a few weeks later by security from a meeting of creditors for physically threatening me. He screamed he would ‘get me’ all the way to the lift. Luckily he never did.

I was threatened by a Gold Coast property tycoon prior to giving evidence against him in court. His attitude in the courtroom was very unnerving and I was looking over my shoulder for a few weeks.

We received serious threats from an ‘organised crime’ group while attempting to take possession of a multi-million dollar yacht.

RV: What books or stories are you working on at the moment?

LS: I am currently working on a crime novel set on the Gold Coast and far north Queensland. Eclipsed is a psychological thriller with mafia undertones, delving into the spiralling demise that anger and revenge can wreak on the personality.

The main character’s personality transformations follow the cycles of an eclipse, from the light into to the darkness then back to the light. I am just working on some final editorial changes, then will be seeking an agent/publisher for it.

Visit Lea Scott’s website at leascott.com.

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