About the novel: 11 Minutes is a crime novel inspired by Melbourne’s infamous 1976 Great Bookie Robbery, one of the most audacious unsolved heists in modern history.

In eleven minutes, six men vanished with the equivalent of $80 million — no arrests, no recovery — but within a decade, all were dead.

The novel blends true-crime detail with noir fiction, focusing not on the mechanics of the robbery but on the psychological aftermath: paranoia, loyalty, and the cost of a “perfect” crime. It has recently been featured in The Age (Australia) by crime reporter John Silvester.

So let’s look deeper into novels based on true crime. I am no expert so I asked the author of 11 Minutes, Gregory M Carroll, to provide me with his take on this blended genre.

Writing My Brother’s Ghost by Gregory M Carroll Guest Post – The Moral Line Between True Crime and Fiction

There comes a point in every crime story where the facts run out.

Police files end. Court transcripts stop mid-sentence. Newspaper clippings repeat themselves. What’s left isn’t evidence, It’s atmosphere. That’s the space fiction steps into.

For many readers, the joy of crime fiction lies in the “whodunnit,” the clever puzzle and the satisfaction of a case closed. But I didn’t set out to write a crime novel. I started writing a biography. My brother’s. I thought if I gathered enough material, archives, inquiries, old reporting, the shape of the story would settle. It didn’t. There were gaps everywhere.

Not gaps in dates or names. Gaps in why. In tone. In how people carried themselves before and after things happened. Gaps that official records don’t acknowledge because they can’t.

Fiction gave me a way to work inside those gaps without pretending they weren’t there.

The Weight of the Aftermath

That distinction matters. True crime is bound to what can be proved. That’s its strength, and its limitation. It can tell us what happened, and sometimes how. It rarely tells what it cost. Fiction, done carefully, can.

But being careful is the difficult part.

Writing around real crimes, especially crimes that still live in memory, comes with responsibilities that are easy to underestimate. There’s a temptation to tidy things up. To draw straight lines where none existed. To make meaning where the truth is that people acted badly, impulsively, or without thinking it through.

I resisted that. Not because I’m high-minded, but because anything else would be dishonest.

I was careful in how I approached true crime not to turn violence into a commodity. That mistakes consequences for drama; charisma for depth. Real criminal worlds don’t work like that. They grind people down. Slowly. Quietly. Often off-stage.

In my experience, the crime itself is rarely the point. The aftermath is.

Paranoia. Fractured loyalties. Men who stop sleeping properly. Families who sense something is wrong long before they know what it is. Those things don’t make headlines, but they shape lives.

The Logical End

There are also ethical issues that must be addressed. Writing, even in a fictionalised form, requires understanding that real families will be impacted. Children grow up. Histories don’t sit neatly in the past.

I’ve been careful not to make allegations. Public-record events stay intact. Everything else is clearly framed as interpretation. To leave readers with possibilities, not conclusions; a story, not a verdict.

That framing wasn’t legal caution. It was moral clarity.

I don’t believe in the idea of a “curse” attached to crimes like the one at the centre of my novel. Nothing mystical happened. What happened was predictable. Men operating in a violent economy eventually meet its logical end. As Hemingway put it, the fish has to be the fish.

Times were changing. Old codes broke down. What once held people together stopped working. That’s not tragedy in the classical sense. It’s erosion.

What Lingers After the Noise

Fiction allowed me to show erosion without needing to resolve it. That’s why I followed the characters beyond the event everyone remembers.

The robbery took minutes. The after effects took years. This is where the real story lies.

I have been asked if I think that this kind of writing is exploitative. I don’t believe so, or at least, that was not my intention. If anything, it’s an attempt to remove the myths that have grown up around such events, like the Great Train Robbery.

These men weren’t monsters. Nor were they heroes. They weren’t one-dimensional; they were complex, charming, and reckless. They were smart in some moments, and short-sighted in others. But their decisions had impacts, and those impacts continued to weigh long after the headlines had gone.

Fiction allows this to be handled in a way journalism can’t. It leaves questions unanswered, ends without resolution. It can accept that some things are not meant to be known.

For readers who enjoy crime narratives but feel uneasy about sensationalism, this kind of fiction offers a different trope. Quieter. Slower. More reflective. It doesn’t ask you to admire anyone. It doesn’t ask you to judge them either. It asks you to consider what lingers after the noise is gone.

That, to me, is where the blurring of true crime and fiction can reach an “emotional truth”.

About the Author

Gregory M. Carroll is not just the author of 11 Minutes – he lived it. Born and raised in the same tough world as the men in his story, he was more than a witness. He was a brother. Ian Carroll was his brother, his best man, and the man whose body he had to identify. Now retired, he writes from the Gold Coast, Australia, bringing lived experience to the page with sharp insight and unflinching honesty. Just like the lives that shaped it.