Interested in what makes people tick, I
have always been fascinated by people who kill. What passion or insanity is it
that drives someone to commit murder? Is it an act that any one of us could
carry out given sufficient provocation or terror, or does it require a
particular kind of personality to pull the trigger or thrust the blade? This
kind of speculation led me to write my debut, Cut Short, the first of my crime novels that examine the psyches of
different killers. Quite unintentionally, I found myself launched into a new
career, writing a series of murder stories.
Advances in forensics make it almost
inevitable that murders nowadays are subject to police investigations. The
police have resources at their disposal that are simply not accessible to
civilians. So it seemed to me that the best way to write about the killers who
interested me was to write police procedurals. So Detective Inspector Geraldine
Steel appeared, along with her colleague Ian Peterson. The parameters of a
police investigation offer a familiar format, which gives the author an
opportunity to fulfill or confound readers' expectations.
Having written a dozen or so police
procedurals, I wanted to tackle the challenge of writing something different.
My police procedurals have not been abandoned. The Geraldine Steel series is
still only half way through, with at least another ten in the pipeline. But I
am also writing a new series featuring my heroine Lucy Hall, which is taking me
in a different direction.
It has been an exciting venture. Lucy
Hall is not a police officer, which frees me from the restrictions of the
police procedural. She is not accountable to anyone for her decisions or her
actions, and there is no one to arrange back up or even notice if she goes off
alone. She is twenty-two in Journey to
Death, and still only twenty-four in the second book in the series, young
enough to be impetuous and take risks. What is more, being a civilian means she
can throw herself into all sorts of dangerous situations that an experienced
detective of nearly forty could never credibly tackle alone.
At the same time, in some ways it has
been a daunting experience as I am never quite sure how Lucy is going to
extricate herself from any situation. Her investigative skills are not under
scrutiny. She can go where she likes, and do what she wants, driven solely by
her determination to protect the innocent and see the guilty punished. How she
achieves that is entirely up to her, a freedom that I find both daunting and
inspiring.
The Lucy Hall books are part crime
novels, part adventure stories. It is going to be fun watching my new
protagonist get into all sorts of scrapes. Acting independently, she will have
to rely on her own instincts and intelligence to save herself from danger. I'm
looking forward to seeing what she gets up to next, and how she manages to
survive.
Journey to Death by Leigh Russell
Lucy Hall arrives in the
Seychelles determined to leave her worries behind. The tropical paradise looks
sun-soaked and picture-perfect—but as Lucy soon discovers, appearances can be
very deceptive. A deadly secret lurks in the island’s history, buried deep but
not forgotten. And it is about to come to light. As black clouds begin to gather over what
promised to be a relaxing family break, Lucy realises that her father stands in
the eye of the coming storm. A shadow from his past is threatening to destroy
all that he holds dear—including the lives of his loved ones. A dark truth is about to explode into their
lives, and that truth is going to hit them right between the eyes.
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