Today's guest blog is by Alex Barclay. Alex
Barclay is an Irish crime writer. She studied journalism at university and
worked for a period in fashion and beauty journalism as a copywriter in the
RTÉ. Her third novel Blood Runs Cold won the he Ireland AM Crime Fiction Award at
the Irish Book Awards
My first book, Darkhouse, came to life because of two
people: lead NYPD detective, Joe Lucchesi, and Texan psycho, Duke Rawlins. The story wouldn’t have existed without both
of them. The first thing I wrote for the
book was what I considered to be Joe’s most dramatic scene that does not
feature Duke. And the second scene I
wrote was Duke’s most dramatic scene that does not feature Joe. By doing that, I was distilling each of their
characters, rooting them, so that when they eventually came together, the stage
was set for their very particular dynamic.
In Joe, I found myself creating a
man I liked and respected, who was a loyal husband and father, and who I would
trust to solve the crime if I was a victim.
Then I hacked some chunks out of that ideal. Duke is a violent psychopath, but my added
motivation in creating him was to include his backstory and show the evolution
of a serial killer. In the sequel, The Caller, Joe is back in New York,
back in his job at the NYPD. He is
unsettled, damaged, altered. Without
realising it at the time, what I set in motion in The Caller, had outcomes to be returned to at a later date, not
right away.
This is what left a door open for Special
Agent Ren Bryce to walk through. Though,
she would have probably smashed a wall in either way. I hadn’t thought of writing a female lead – I
had always felt more drawn to writing men.
Ren came to me fully formed as a bipolar FBI agent, and once I had that,
I was hooked. Though we’re all so used
to calling heroes and heroines flawed, I don’t see Ren’s bipolar condition as a
flaw. I see it as something that can
help and hinder her. Flaw sounds wrong
to me. She can harness mania for a time
to dazzling effect, but then the reins fly from her grip. When readers know Ren over the course of the
books, they know her triggers, her nightmare scenarios, the warning signs of
her highs and her crashes. Even if you
strip away the central crimes of the novels, there is intrigue to be found with
Ren alone. As Ren’s furious boss says at
one point, ‘I have found myself riding the Ren Bryce rollercoaster again…’
And it’s a rollercoaster for me to
write. I love writing Ren, I love
writing her thoughts. And sometimes it’s
the moments when you expect her to think something, when she really should be
thinking something, and there is no internal thought, you know, perhaps, that
something is amiss. In every book,
there’s a crime to be solved, a mystery to unravel. And in every book, there is Ren to be solved,
and Ren to unravel.
Ren and Joe are such different
characters to write: Joe is serious and intense, but he has suffered more
harrowing personal traumas. I like probing
his sullenness, his introspection. Ren
has a wilder side, and this is magnified when she’s manic. They are both risk takers, though, they are
both rule-benders. And I like walking
that line.
There is no sense of “lasting”
with Ren – everything is in motion; the platform is unstable. Because of this, every book brings surprises
to me. I always have definitive ideas
about where she’s going, or, for example, if she’ll be medicated or not, but
then I’ll start a scene and she’ll take me somewhere I hadn’t expected. I want readers to feel that too – that’s
why, like her frustrated boss, I give her a lot of rope. She might lasso a killer with it, make a tyre
swing, or abseil down a building, but either way, she’ll make use of what I throw
her way.
For me, the wonderful part of what
I do is being able to explore different heroes, heroines, villains and victims,
and to have an editor and a publisher who supports that. When inspiration strikes, I’m very grateful
to be able to harness it. I’ve just
finished Killing Ways, the sequel to Harm’s Reach, and I was able to pursue a
dream scenario that I’d been considering for many years. I owe that to my editor, Sarah Hodgson: I ran
the idea by her, she said “go for it” and go for it I did. It was a blast.
You can find out more information about Alex Barclay and her
books on her website or you can
follow her Facebook.
Harm's Reach -
FBI
Agent Ren Bryce finds herself entangled in two seemingly unrelated
mysteries. But the past has a way of
echoing down the years and finding its way into the present. FBI Agent Ren Bryce finally seems to have
found balance. She's taking her
medication, seeing her therapist and thinking about moving in with her
boyfriend. But when she and her boss
discover a pregnant woman shot to death inside an abandoned car, Ren finds
herself embroiled in a case that will drag her into emotional turmoil and put
her best friend in mortal danger. Why
was Laura Finn driving towards a ranch for troubled teens in the middle of
Colorado when her employers, the incredibly wealthy Princes, thought she was
headed to Chicago to comfort a grieving friend?
And what did she know about a cold case from 50 years ago, which her
death dramatically reopens? As Ren and
cold case investigator Janine Hooks slowly weave the threads together, a
picture emerges of a privileged family with some very dark secrets...
Harm's Reach by Alex Barclay is out now (Harper Collins)
