Have you done your background checks?

When writing a series, it’s important to have an established backstory for your main character. Readers are investing their time and money in reading your book and it’s your protagonist that’s going to keep them coming back for more. This is especially important in a police procedural. The very best fictional police officers translate well to TV because of the authors who created them in the first place – DCI Jane Tennison (Lynda LaPlante), DI Vera Stanhope (Ann Cleeves) and DCI Morse (Colin Dexter), to name but a few. In fact, the backstory for Morse was so good that Endeavour came into being. If I’m truly honest, I preferred Endeavour to Morse but that might be because I watched it knowing what Morse would become.

DI Bernadette ‘Bernie’ Noel wasn’t the main character in my first ever book. She was a DS but her backstory was still the same – dual heritage with white mother and black father (both fifteen when she was conceived); raised white by her mother and maternal grandparents and close to her grandfather in particular; no knowledge of who her father was; joined the Met at nineteen but then a terrible event happened that forced her later to move to Wiltshire Police. Her backstory was more developed than the main character in that novel which is probably one of the reasons why she then became my protagonist.

I took all of that into my first ‘Bernie’ novel – Last Seen. Some of it was dealt with in my debut but the ‘terrible event’ has lingered in the background until now. In Rewind, the fourth book in the series, all is revealed and the literal scar that Bernie has on the left side of her abdomen is explained. I knew the story well as I’d been thinking about it for six years. It was there, ready in my head to go. But something held me back. 

When I first started writing Bernie, I was acutely aware I was a white woman writing a dual heritage one. Originally her mother was black and she was raised in a black home and community. But my writing wasn’t authentic so I asked friends who were dual heritage for advice. One said, ‘I’m not sure if I can help you. My mother’s white and I was brought up white.’ It was a lightbulb moment and Bernie’s maternal family became white. But that didn’t help me with Rewind. This time, Bernie (in the past), would be heading onto a Peckham housing estate to take part in an undercover operation that would tackle gangs and drugs in a black community. I was as ill-equipped as Bernie.

Quite by chance, I saw on the London news, a young man talking about his forthcoming memoir – That Peckham Boy. Kenny Imafidon had been both a model student and a small-time drug dealer selling cannabis. When he was falsely accused of murder, his life turned upside down. I knew I had to read this book. As I read it, I underlined parts and then added post-it notes with the headings – how to survive; don’t trust the police; how not to get caught; weapons; how best to earn money; powerful words from mum; church inside and out of prison; don’t snitch; be yourself. As I took this on board, I realised the characters were more important than the situation. We’re so used to a 2-D version being portrayed in the media, especially in the news, but Kenny’s memoir gave a 3-D insight into the realities of poverty, single parent families and gangs. From the headings above, ‘don’t trust the police’ and ‘don’t snitch’ stood out the most and a lot of them sound negative. However, hope weaves like a golden thread throughout Imafidon’s book. I chose redemption and forgiveness as my main themes for Rewind.

I watched YouTube videos about the area but I really needed to visit. Author, Anne Coates, who knows Peckham well, showed me round to get a feel for the place – sights, sounds and smells. Rye Lane was busy and colourful. The graffiti on the walls and shop shutters were more like works of art. We found a housing estate that was part of the inspiration for my fictional one, with its twenty-storey tower rising above the smaller three-storey buildings. Drawing on everything I’d learned, the plot started to come together, the characters connected with Bernie and I was ready to tell her backstory at last. I’d done my background checks.

Rewind by Joy Kluver (Marchant Press) Out Now 

When DI Bernie Noel goes back to work after maternity leave, she doesn’t expect to find a crashed car with a dead driver on her journey in. But a gruesome discovery in the boot of the car turns a road traffic accident into something more sinister and personal for the detective. It isn’t long before Bernie is forced to rewind six years and confront her failed covert operation in London. But as she relives that failure, can she survive the present danger too?

Creating Constantinople: Influences on a Victorian Novel

I started writing novels at a very early age. I was twelve when I wrote my first novel (a crime-thriller told from multiple perspectives in seedy LA), and fourteen when I wrote my second (an epic revenge Western)! Growing up in leafy Golders Green, novels were an escape from normal life – and that escapist urge still motivates my writing to this day.

Murder in Constantinople follows Ben Canaan, a troublesome 21-year-old in the East End of London in 1854. When we meet Ben, he is torn between a life of petty crime under the wing of a dockland gangster, and following his father’s footsteps as a tailor in the family workshop. But an affair with a beautiful stranger and a theft gone wrong results in Ben going on the run to Constantinople: capital of the Ottoman Empire on the eve of the Crimean War. Ben quickly finds himself caught in the crosshairs of a deadly serial killer terrorising the city, and must unravel a series of brutal murders in order to survive.

Murder in Constantinople began life when I graduated as an English student at Cambridge. My literary passions were the Russian giants of the nineteenth century – Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev – as well as specialists in serialised storytelling including Dickens and Henry James. I particularly loved the Bildungsroman genre: coming-of-age stories such as David Copperfield and Great Expectations, focused on the personal growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood. 

I wanted to bring this type of storytelling to the detective genre. Our hero Ben is not a detective when we meet him, but over the course of the story, he becomes one. This explodes the conventional trope of detective novels: usually, we meet the detective once he already has his bag of tricks, his modus operandi, his view of the world (think Sherlock or Poirot). But in Murder in Constantinople, we see Ben start to fill his bag of tricks – we are watching the formation of a detective in real time.

The nineteenth century fascinated me not just because of my literary influences, but also because of my family history. Similar to the Canaan family of my novel, my ancestors were Jews who fled to London from Vienna in the mid-nineteenth century, setting up shop as milliners in the Jewish ghetto of London’s East End. I wanted to explore what it must have been like growing up in that world as an immigrant, but told from the perspective of a young man with my mindset: wanting to break free from these confines and chart his own course.

Ben, like many children of immigrant families, is saddled with his family’s rigid expectations – especially his father, who demands that he joins the family business. For Ben, the alternatives are stark: either he fully embraces life in London’s criminal underworld, or he embarks on an unexpected adventure into a warzone. Murder in Constantinople tells the story of how Ben makes this choice, and in the process finds his calling.

A major theme of Murder in Constantinople is colonialism and its legacy. Ben’s adventures are set against the backdrop of colonial conflicts, allowing us to see colonialism at work – its perpetrators, its winners and losers, the roots of modern conflicts, and how the practices of colonialism persist even today in a post-colonial age. 

The Crimean War is a powerful example of this which still resonates today. In the 1850s, Crimea was the epicentre of a violent clash between the Russian Empire and the empires of Europe. And now, in the 21^stcentury, that same region is the focal point for another violent clash between the “modern empires” of the Global East and the Global West.

A significant part of my research was devoted to understanding Constantinople, the location of modern-day Istanbul, as it existed in the 1850s. To do this, I read travel books from the 19^th century – old Baedekers and Murray’s Handbooks – to develop a nuanced sense of life in all its facets: the city’s topography, its rich array of languages, peoples and cultures, its architecture, its political hierarchies, its local economy, its laws. The goal was to portray Constantinople not as a place in history, but as a place that feels as present for readers as it is for the characters inhabiting it.

Murder in Constantinople is the first in a planned series of five novels, each exploring Ben’s adventures as a globe-trotting detective. I am currently writing the second book in the series – titled Death on the Pearl River, also for Pushkin Press – which takes an older Ben into even darker territory. The Ben Canaan Mysteries will chart the course of Ben’s entire life over several decades. So, on some level, these detective novels taken together will be a biography both of Ben and the century he lived in, as much as a series of crimes to be solved.

Murder in Constantinople by A E Goldin (Pushkin Press) Out Now. London, 1854. Twenty-one-year-old Ben Canaan attracts trouble wherever he goes. His father wants him to be a good Jewish son, working for the family business on Whitechapel Road, but Ben and his friends, the 'Good-for-Nothings', just want adventure. Then the discovery of an enigmatic letter and a photograph of a beautiful woman offer an escapade more dangerous than anything he'd imagined. Suddenly Ben is thrown into a mystery that takes him all the way to Constantinople, the jewel of an empire and the centre of a world on the brink of war. His only clue is three words: 'The White Death'. Now he must find what links a string of grisly murders, following a trail through king making and conspiracy, poison and high politics, bloodshed and betrayal. In a city of deadly secrets, no one is safe - and one wrong step could cost Ben his life.

More information about Aron and his work can be found on his website. You can also follow him on X @A.E.Goldin and on Instagram @a.e.goldin and also on Facebook.

Peter James launches ONE OF US IS DEAD

 

Many writers and publishers are accused of concentrating their efforts around London and with the large book chains – so it was a delight to see Peter James support independent booksellers signing his latest Roy Grace detective thriller in Rural Cheshire ahead of the official launch.

Peter was greeted by the owner of the Nantwich Bookshop Steve where a huge line of Peter James’ readers had assembled to purchase and have personalised signatures of an exclusive independent bookshop edition.  

About the Nantwich Bookshop

Est. 2003, Nantwich Bookshop has become a well-known family-run independent Bookshop and Coffee Lounge in Cheshire - proud to have produced years of happy customers from their love for Books and Literacy - and their desire to see their town thrive, drives who they are and what they do. Every. Single. Day as well as their online presence where you can purchase the latest Roy Grace thriller ONE OF US IS DEAD via their link HERE

….so back to the latest Roy Grace detective adventure…..

Roy Grace is about to find out just how dangerous a dead man can be . . ….
When James Taylor arrives late for a funeral, he has to stand at the back of the small church. But, as the service progresses, Taylor notices a man six rows in front of him. At first he thinks he must be mistaken, but the more he looks at the man, the more convinced Taylor becomes that this is his old schoolfriend Rufus Rorke.
Except it couldn’t be him, could it? Because two years ago Taylor attended Rufus Rorke’s funeral. He even delivered Rufus’s eulogy.
On the other side of Brighton, at Police HQ, Detective Superintendent Roy Grace has been alerted to a number of suspicious deaths that he can’t get out of his mind. But how are they linked? And could they possibly be connected to Rufus Rorke?

We’ve followed Peter’s work for many years now and reviewed his work at Shots over the years so it’s with excitement that the latest novel ONE OF US IS DEAD is released next week [24^th September 2024] however independent bookshops across the UK have these special editions available for sale ahead of the mass market.  

And remember the TV series GRACE based on Peter’s novels has entered its 4^th season on ITV and all episodes are available for streaming from ITVX online and the series has been renewed for a fifth season -

ITV has recommissioned the popular Brighton-based detective drama GRACE. Based on the internationally bestselling Detective Superintendent Roy Grace books by Peter James, the TV adaptation is now confirmed for a fifth series.

John Simm returns as Detective Superintendent Roy Grace for another four feature length films (4 x 120 minutes) which will air on ITV1 and ITVX. Also reprising their roles for series five are Richie Campbell (Top Boy, Stephen) who plays DS Glenn Branson, Zoë Tapper (Liar) as Cleo Morey, Laura Elphinstone (Chernobyl) as DS Bella Moy, Brad Morrison (Outlander) as DC Nick Nicholl and Sam Hoare (The Castaways) as ACC Cassian Pewe.

Series five will be based on four books from the Peter James series: DEAD IF YOU DON’T, DEAD AT FIRST SIGHT, NEED YOU DEAD and FIND THEM DEAD.

Read More HERE

Shots Magazine would like to thank Steve and the team at The Nantwich Bookshop, Jules Barretto of Riot Communications and Pan Macmillan Publishing for their help in producing this article.

If you would like to purchase an exclusive signed copy of the independent bookshop edition from another independent bookshop click HERE

For more information about the work of Peter James click HERE

And if you are new to the series……

Bouchercon 2025 New Orleans UPDATE

 

Following the success of the City of New Orleans hosting Bouchercon [aka THE WORLD CRIME & MYSTERY CONVENTION] in 2016 thanks to the efforts of Heather Graham and Connie Perry and their team - Next Year - 2025 Bouchercon returns to New Orleans. 

And it's confirmed that from Shots Magazine, Ayo Onatade, Mike Stotter and Ali Karim will be attending and we hope many of our colleagues and friends from the British Crime, Mystery and Thriller community will be joining us - especially as the bestselling [and award winning] thriller writer Lisa Jewell is the British Guest of Honour at the event.

Please find the latest information from the New Orleans Bouchercon Co-Chairs - the amazing Connie Perry and Heather Graham 

September 18, 2024 Greetings and Happy Fall! As one incredible Bouchercon wraps up, we’re thrilled to announce that preparations for the next one are already in full swing. Hotel reservations are now open for Bouchercon New Orleans 2025, and we can’t wait to bring you another unforgettable experience, just like the one we had in 2016. For those who missed it, get ready to dive into the excitement of the 2nd Line Parade, explore the World War II Museum, enjoy fantastic panels, Speed Dating, Cozies and Cocktails, the Debut Mystery Author Breakfast, and the renowned Anthony Awards! Building on the success of new events introduced in Nashville, we’re excited to repeat them in New Orleans. The Discovery Zone and the “Free Books” Library Event were huge hits, and if you missed out in Nashville, you’ll definitely want to join the fun in New Orleans.  We’re also delighted to announce that the Crime Writers of Color event will be returning this year. Stay tuned for more details in our upcoming newsletters. BUDDY SYSTEM WILL BE IMPLEMENTED IN NEW ORLEANS We’re also excited to introduce the Buddy System for newcomers, a concept we discussed in 2021. If you’re interested in helping first-timers navigate Bouchercon, please send us your name and phone number. During the convention, drop by Bouchercon 101 and connect with a newbie to help them make the most of the event. Converse with your 1st timer, go to lunch, have a drink, etc. Let them know where events will happen, walk the convention with them and answer all their questions. Email: boucheron2025@bouchercon.com if you are interested.

AUTHORS For authors planning to attend and participate in panels or moderate, please note that registration is required by April 1st. After this date, you will be placed on a wait list. At the end of September, we’ll be sending out a form to all authors who registered during the month of September. This form will help our panel chairs match you with the perfect panel based on your genre or interests. We’ll continue to send this form monthly to all newly registered authors. Register for the convention here.

New Orleans Newsletters

Our monthly newsletters are your key to staying updated on all things Bouchercon, from speed dating to the Debut Mystery Author’s Breakfast. If you’ve unsubscribed from Constant Contact, please let us know if you wish to resubscribe. We will ask Constant Contact to send you a re-subscription email—just follow the instructions to get back on our list. These newsletters are crucial for keeping you informed!

HOST HOTEL - MARRIOTT HOTEL

The Marriott Hotel at 555 Canal Street will be our host hotel, offering beautiful accommodations and easy navigation. You must be registered for the convention, to get the fantastic convention rate of $179.00/night. If you need a scooter, please inform connie@perryco.biz in advance, and she'll arrange for you to have a scooter upon arrival.

Boucher Cup III

Matt Coyle is ready to set up the new Boucher Cup III Golf Tournament for New Orleans. As he said "the sooner the better." The Tourney will be held on Wednesday, September 3, 2025. If you are interested, and would like more details please email: mcoyle044@yahoo.com

For all inquiries and registration details for Bouchercon New Orleans 2025, please contact bouchercon2025@bouchercon.com. If you encounter any issues, feel free to email connie@perryco.biz or call 337-319-5783. We’ll be in touch again at the end of September. Be sure to read all our newsletters, and don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions. Looking forward to seeing you in New Orleans, Heather Graham Chair New Orleans 2025

Petrona Award 2024 Longlist

Ten crime novels from Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Sweden have made the longlist for the 2024 Petrona Award for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year.

They are:

You Will Never Be Found by Tove Alsterdal, tr. Alice Menzies (Sweden, Faber & Faber)

The Collector by Anne Mette Hancock, tr. Tara F Chace (Denmark, Swift Press)

Snow Fall by Jørn Lier Horst, tr. Anne Bruce (Norway, Michael Joseph)

Stigma by Jørn Lier Horst and Thomas Enger, tr. Megan E Turney (Norway, Orenda Books)

The Girl by the Bridge by Arnaldur Indriðason, tr. Philip Roughton (Iceland, Harvill Secker)

Dead Men Dancing by Jógvan Isaksen, tr. Marita Thomsen (Faroe Islands (Denmark), Norvik Press)

The Sins of our Fathers by Åsa Larsson, tr. Frank Perry (Sweden, MacLehose Press)

White as Snow by Lilja Sigurðardottir, tr. Quentin Bates (Iceland, Orenda Books)

The Prey by Yrsa Sigurðardottir, tr. Victoria Cribb (Iceland, Hodder & Stoughton)

The Girl in the Eagle's Talons by Karin Smirnoff, tr. Sarah Death (Sweden, MacLehose Press)

The long list contains a mix of newer and more established authors including previous Petrona Award winners, Jørn Lier Horst and Yrsa Sigurðardottir.

Both large and small publishers are represented on the longlist, with Orenda Books and MacLehose Press both having two entries, and the breakdown by country is Iceland (3), Sweden (3), Denmark (2) and Norway (2).

The shortlist will be announced on 10 October 2024.

The Petrona Award 2024 judging panel comprises Jackie Farrant, the creator of RAVEN CRIME READS and a bookseller/Area Commercial Support for a major book chain in the UK and Ewa Sherman, translator and writer, and blogger at NORDIC LIGHTHOUSE, with additional help from Sarah Ward, author, former Petrona Award judge and current CWA Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger judge.

The Award administrator is Karen Meek, owner of the EURO CRIME blog and website.

The Petrona team would like to thank both our sponsor, David Hicks, for his continuing support of the Petrona Award and the CWA, in particular Maxim Jakubowski, for allowing Sarah to step in following the very unexpected death of our much missed judge and friend Miriam Owen.

J D Kirk on Living with Jack Logan

Officially, it has been just over five years since I first met DCI Jack Logan, the main protagonist of the crime fiction series I write set in the Scottish Highlands.

In that time, as I’ve uncovered some of his many quirks and foibles, I have gradually come to realise something significant - Jack has been hanging around for a long time before then.

I am, by nature, a Very Nice Man. I’m patient. I’m polite. I will try to deescalate confrontation whenever I can. I put it down to parenting, and too many Superman comics as a kid. I was never a Boy Scout – to the best of my knowledge, they didn’t exist in the small Highland town I grew up in - but if I had been, I would have absolutely nailed it.

We all do it to some extent or other – bite our tongues, rather than say out loud what we’re really thinking. I’ve never liked making people feel bad, and, being a six-foot-four Scottish man, am always wary that I could come across as intimidating.

Jack Logan doesn’t bother worrying about these things, though. And he’s six-foot-six.

I’ve written about Jack non-stop for over half a decade now, but I realise that I’ve felt him lurking in the background for most of my adult life.

He was there when I worked in a bar in Fort William, on the day that a group of Buckie Young Farmers kicked off and almost dropped a decorative whisky cast on another customer. I chased all fifteen of them down the street, before common sense kicked in and I raced back to the pub before they realised quite how badly I was outnumbered.

That chase along the High Street, I think, was Jack Logan taking the wheel.

He’s been bubbling below the surface on other occasions, too. When I finally told a self-important manager at the call centre I worked at in my early twenties exactly what I and everyone else in the building thought of his behaviour, that was Jack.

When I explained, quite firmly, to the sketchy landlord of our even sketchier flat that, no, he wouldn’t be getting his rent this month, because one of the rotting windows had fallen out of the frame and smashed on the pavement three floors below, Jack had my back.

The older I get, and the more I write about him, the more alike we become. We’re both equally as tormented by and besotted with our dogs. We’re both a little too partial to a roll and square sausage. We both hate camper van drivers, and face similar difficulties when it comes to getting behind the wheel of a Ford Fiesta. 

We’re the same age, too, although I like to think I look younger.

On a more fundamental level, I believe we share the same moral compass. The only difference being that Jack is much more ready and willing to stab people in the eye with the pointy bit.

But, I’ve come to realise that I’m not only Jack Logan. I’m the other characters, too. 

I share DC Tyler Neish’s inability to get through a day without some sort of personal disaster. I’ve never come close to being hit by a train like he has, but I did once step off a moving bus and get wrapped around a lamp post, then hit on the back of the head by the wing mirror when I stood up.

Like DS Hamza Khaled, I’m the family tech expert, called upon regularly by older relatives to fix their broadband, or their iPads, or to explain why the TV remote isn’t working (the answer inevitably being: ‘Because that’s not the remote, it’s your phone.’)

I share DI Ben Forde’s warmth towards people, Shona Maguire’s love for a Pot Noodle, and DC Sinead Bell’s near-supernatural ability to tolerate idiots.

And, though I’m almost afraid to admit it, I’m disgraced former Det Supt Bob Hoon, too. Bob is just me, but with all the switches that control the friendly, affable parts of my personality flipped in the opposite direction, and the anger dial cranked up to eleven.

Blend all the series’ characters together - heroes and villains alike – and the resulting gloopy mess would, I think, be quite recognisable as their creator. 

Only, you know, you’d have to keep it in a jug.

As I approach fifty, I find both my patience and my ability to suffer fools rapidly dwindling. I honestly don't know if it's an age thing, or if I've just been spending too much time in Logan's company. 

Perhaps it's a bit of both - a perfect storm of middle-aged grumpiness and fictional detective influence. If it's the latter then, with no plans to stop writing the series anytime soon, I've a feeling it's going to make the next few years very interesting. Call centre managers and dodgy landlords, you have been warned... 

But then again, maybe that's not such a bad thing. After all, in a world that feels increasingly chaotic, there's something to be said for channelling your inner Jack Logan - standing up for what's right, even if it means ruffling a few feathers along the way. 

A Killer of Influencer by J D Kirk (Canelo) Out Now 

Following a convention in the Scottish Highlands, eight social media influencers vanish without a trace, leaving their followers – and families – in a state of shock, and the police clueless as to their whereabouts. And then, the livestreams begin. Broadcast live from their squalid underground cells, the young influencers are forced into a sadistic battle for survival. With each livestream, their captor pits them against each other in a twisted competition for likes. The influencer with the fewest positive reactions faces a gruesome end – live on camera. As the likes increase and the death toll rises, DCI Jack Logan and his team must traverse both the Scottish wilderness and the darkest corners of the internet to try and save the remaining captives. But how do you catch a killer who is always one click ahead?

More information about J D Kirk and his books can be found on his website. You can also find him on Facebook and on Instagram @jdkirkbooks

A Shift in Mind and in Story by Yasmin Angoe

Change is difficult and scary when you’ve been used to doing something a certain kind of way for so long. In my case it was writing in the world of Nena Knight from the Her Name Is Knight trilogy. I spent the last decade thinking about this action and espionage thriller about the intrepid elite assassin of a clandestine secret organization called the African Tribal Council, run by Africa’s wealthiest elite who wanted to uplift and revitalize Africa and the people of the African Diaspora. I luxuriated in the world of Nena Knight until the trilogy had to sadly come to an end (for now, I hope). 

So now what?

I didn’t have the mental capacity to jump into another series. Nothing that was long-standing was coming to me. I wanted to stretch and grow in my writing, to try something new. I wanted to build my readership… three books in by that time, I still considered myself a newbie author and I wanted readers to see what I was capable of. I wanted to see for myself, as well. Could I do this thing and make this change? Would my editors like it, and more importantly, would the readers accept the switch from action thriller to psychological? I never want to be relegated to one genre. I wanted to write what I’m feeling at the moment, and as long as it was a damn good story with characters who the readers would have a visceral reaction to on some level, I would be okay, and the readers will hopefully be along for the ride. 

Since I wasn’t ready for another series, standalone was the way to go. Since I wanted to stretch, grow, and challenge myself just as I did when writing an assassin the readers needed to root for (because they’re not supposed to, right?), I decided to write a story that would be more intimate in story and setting, a cautionary tale wrapped in secrets, hidden pasts, and just pure reckless fun.

In deciding to write an intimate thriller, it afforded me the opportunity be a little adventurous. I wanted to write a story that shared the same concept and messaging as two of my favorite literary pieces that I used to teach my middle schoolers back in the day.

The pieces were Mary Howitt’s poem “The Spider and the Fly” and Roald Dahl’s short story “The Landlady”. If you’ve never read them before, please do, especially after you’ve read Not What She Seems. You’ll notice my nods to those works and feel my admiration for them. You’ll appreciate the references even more.

Why did these two works of children’s literature captivate me enough to want to write a modernized retelling of an age-old warning of if it sounds too good to be true it probably is? Shakespeare said it first in his famous line, “All that glitters is not gold” from his play, The Merchant of Venice, another favorite of mine when I was studying British Lit in college. 

The message of these three works was simple. Everything that looked true, or beautiful, innocent, or safe doesn’t always turn out to be so. Howitt and Dahl took the concept even further, warning to be careful of the methods of flattery, seduction, and masks as a means of ensnarement. Trust your gut. Note the signs. 

The victims always ignored the signs. They found out too late that the person (or spider in Howitt’s case) was never harmless but in fact a predator. In Not What She Seems, Jac Brodie and the townspeople of Brook Haven have the same hard learning. Some of them learn it a hair too late.

Channeling Howitt, Dahl, and Shakespeare, I set out to write my very own standalone in this new-for-me domestic thriller sub-genre. I did my research, read in the genre, tested various different ways to tell my cautionary tale like my predecessors, but with a modernized flare. I wanted to keep elicit the same feelings I had when I read those works—feelings of apprehension of knowing that no good was going to come and frustration at the characters for the signs they kept missing until it was just too late.

Now that Not What She Seems is out there in the world and being well-received, I can breathe a sigh of relief because I’ve achieved the goal I set to write a standalone thriller different from Nena Knight. And I accomplished my challenge to stretch myself creatively while writing my own story that pays homage to those great works that served as inspiration. 

Not What She Seems by Yasmin Angoe (Thomas & Mercer) Out Now

She left home as the local pariah at twenty-two, but when a family tragedy brings her back, she must confront her tortured past—and a new danger in town that no one seems to understand but her. After years of self-exile, Jacinda “Jac” Brodie is back in Brook Haven, South Carolina. But the small cliffside town no longer feels like home. Jac hasn’t been there since the beloved chief of police fell to his death—and all the whispers said she was to blame. That chief was Jac’s father. Racked with guilt, Jac left town with no plans to return. But when her granddad lands in the hospital, she rushes back to her family, bracing herself to confront the past. Brook Haven feels different now. Wealthy newcomer Faye Arden has transformed the notorious Moor Manor into a quaint country inn. Jac’s convinced something sinister lurks beneath Faye’s perfect exterior, yet the whole town fawns over their charismatic new benefactor. And when Jac discovers one of her granddad’s prized possessions in Faye’s office, she knows she has to be right. But as Jac continues to dig, she stumbles upon dangerous truths that hit too close to home. With not only her life but also her family’s safety on the line, Jac discovers that maybe some secrets are better left buried.

Yasmin Angoe is the Anthony Award-nominated author of the critically acclaimed Nena Knight Series, including Her Name is Knight, They Come at Knight, and It Ends with Knight. NOT WHAT SHE SEEMS is Angoe’s first work of domestic psychological suspense. Yasmin’s Knight Series novels have been featured in The New York Times, Oprah Daily, The Guardian, PopSugar, and the Woman’s World book club, and the series is currently in development for TV by Ink Factory & Fifth Season. 

Hailing from Northern Virginia, Yasmin Angoe is a first-generation Ghanaian American who grew up in two cultural worlds. She taught English in middle and high schools for years and served as an instructional coach for virtual teachers. She now writes fiction fulltime and freelances as a development editor. Yasmin lives in South Carolina with her husband their four children.

More information about Yasmin Angoe and her boos can be found on her website. She can also be found on X @YasAWriter and on Facebook and Instagram @author_yasminangoe