This episode of the Crime Cafe features my interview with crime writer Kim Hays.

Learn all about her Linder and Donatelli mysteries here.Before I bring on my guest, I’ll just remind you that the Crime Cafe has two eBooks for sale: the nine book box set and the short story anthology. You can find the buy inks for both on my website, debbimack.com under the Crime Cafe link. You can also get a free copy of either book if you become a Patreon supporter. You’ll get that and much more if you support the podcast on Patreon, along with our eternal gratitude for doing so.We also have a shop now. Check it out!Check us out on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/crimecafeDownload a copy of the transcript here.

Debbi: Hi everyone. Today's guest is a dual citizen of the US and Switzerland. She's also the author of the Polizei Bern Series, featuring two detectives Giuliana Linder and Renzo Donatelli. Her work has been shortlisted for many awards and she has two books out in this series with a third coming next year, which is coming very quickly. It's my pleasure to have with me today, Kim Hays. Kim, hi. How are you doing?Kim: I'm great, and thanks for having me.Debbi: Well, it's my pleasure, believe me. It must be late there where you are. Switzerland, right?Kim: Yes. Here in Bern, it's nine o'clock, but not too late. My eyes are wide awake.Debbi: Still functional at nine. Very good.Kim: Exactly.Debbi: Good. You have a great website, by the way. I really love all the descriptions of Switzerland you have under the information tab about Bern in Switzerland.Kim: Oh, thank you. I try to put in a lot of sort of strange and interesting facts, like that the Swiss flag is the only square flag besides the Vatican's flag. Every other flag in the world is rectangular. This is the sort of thing that nobody knows and why should they, but it's fun.Debbi: Wow! I didn't know that. That's very interesting. So what was it that inspired you to write about the subjects that you picked, which are very topical subjects by the way. Pesticides and child labor?Kim: Yes, and in the third book, I have homophobia as a topic too, so that's certainly … I have a lesbian activist who's killed in a hit-and-run, but I realize you haven't read that one. I have, of course, so I won't go into that. You know, I love to research and I like to learn, as you know most writers do, as most people do. So I guess I'm lucky that things turn out to be topical, but often I decide to put something in a book that I want to learn more about. I used to write articles here for a Swiss language magazine, and so I had done a short article on organic farmers, and when I started thinking about writing a mystery, I already started thinking about what background do I want to give it? And immediately I thought, well, what do I want to research? I knew that I would like to do more research on organic farming, and then of course, I had to think of a reason for an organic farmer to get murdered.The second book, which involves a really terrible scandal in Switzerland—child labor—where children were supposedly fostered out, but really placed on farms almost as slaves from a very young age, into the late 1960s, early 70s. This was something I saw a museum exhibition on because it was just starting. The scandal was just starting. As late as the early 21st century, people were starting to be aware of it. And once I saw that, I thought it would be something very interesting to talk about. And certainly, one could easily imagine how murders or violence might occur as a result of something like that.Debbi: Yes, absolutely. That's astonishing, I have to say. Linder is a really interesting character because she's always automatically picking up clues as she goes, and kind of filing them into her head, which is something I don't see a lot in mystery writing, the way she picks up these little details and kind of narrates them to you.