Crossing the Lines (2017) is a crime novel by Australian writer Sulari Gentill. It was published in the US in 2020 under the title After She Wrote Him.
It won the 2018 Ned Kelly Award for Best Fiction, and was shortlisted for the 2018 Davitt Award for Best Adult Crime Novel.
"When Madeleine dâÂÂLeon conjures Ned McGinnity as the hero in her latest crime novel, she makes him a serious writer simply because the irony of a protagonist whoâÂÂd never lower himself to read the story in which he stars, amuses her. When Ned McGinnity creates Madeleine dâÂÂLeon, she is his literary device, a writer of detective fiction who is herself a mystery to be unravelled. As Ned and Madeleine play out their own lives while writing the otherâÂÂs story, they find themselves crossing the lines that divide the real and the imagined. This is a story about two people trying to hold onto each other beyond reality." (Publication summary)
In The Newtown Review of Books Karen Chisholm noted that the novel was "intricate, immersive and elegantly delivered with switching viewpoints that are seamless, and often effected, as in the above quotation, mid-paragraph. ThereâÂÂs nothing jolting about this device, though, the prose is light and captivating and the movement segues so beautifully that you donâÂÂt see it, and really donâÂÂt care."
The reviewer in Kirkus Reviews concluded: "In this intriguing and unusual tale, a stunning departure from GentillâÂÂs period mysteries (Give the Devil His Due, 2015, etc.), the question is not whodunit but whoâÂÂs real and whoâÂÂs a figment of someoneâÂÂs vivid imagination."