Could You Commit a Murder? by Lauren North

For the vast majority of us the answer to this question is of course NO! And yet we never really know how we’re going to react when we find ourselves in the worst moments of our lives, do we?

Just for a minute, imagine the scenario – your boyfriend of seven years is going to propose. You’ve seen the ring hidden in his sock drawer. A big fat diamond you can’t wait for people to see on your finger. He’s been acting quiet and secretive for weeks. And so when he suggests you take a day off work and a walk along the remote cliff tops you both love so much, you know what’s coming. You’re so sure in fact that you let slip to your friends, revelling in the excited squeals over bottles of Prosecco on a Friday night. Your mum is already scrolling Google for suitable wedding venues and has a bottle of champagne hidden in the back of her fridge for when you stop by afterwards to show off the ring. 

The day arrives and it’s overcast, the path along the cliff top blustery and deserted, and when you reach the spot where you shared your very first kiss together, and your boyfriend stops and turns to take in the views of the steal-grey sea and distant ships, you know the moment has come at last. All those years of patience, all those times sat on hard wooden pews watching your friends say, ‘I do’ and pretending not to mind, and finally it’s here – your turn. 

You can’t stop the smile stretching across your face as he turns to you, eyes wide with emotion. But then it all goes wrong. The words that leave his mouth, aren’t, ‘will you marry me?’ they’re, ‘I’m sorry, it’s over.’ He’s in love with someone else. He’s going to propose to someone else. The big fat diamond you found in the sock drawer is for someone else. 

The rage is hot and quick, scorching through your blood. You feel the humiliation burn on your face. All the friends you’ll have to tell, your family too. All those looks of pity from your smug married friends. Oh how wrong you got it. He must see something in your face because he takes a step back, and suddenly he’s close to the edge of the cliff and there’s no one else for miles, and you see in that moment of blinding fury another story. Not the jilted girlfriend, but the grieving fiancée, an unspeakable tragedy after a proposal. Who would know? And all it would take is one shove, one burst of that anger pumping through you. 

Are you still sure you’re not capable of murder? 

Perhaps your answer is still no, and that’s fair enough. But maybe we all have a button somewhere deep inside us, a situation where we’ll find ourselves crossing that line. And let’s not forget that I haven’t even mentioned children yet – that fierce love we have for them, and how far we’d go to protect them. 

It really is impossible to know how anyone will react when their worst moment happens. And there lies the beauty of psychology and the enduring popularity of psychological thrillers. Authors who take the ordinary people, the loving girlfriend, the two point four, the relatable, and throw them into the unimaginable. 

As an author, I’m no different. In my latest novel Safe At Home, anxious mother, Anna, leaves her 11-year old child home alone. Why? Because at some point we have to take that step, we have to give that independence, and it’s only twenty minutes and the village really is very safe. But twenty minutes becomes five hours when a lorry turns over on the road ahead of Anna and she’s stuck. 

It’s all so easy to imagine, isn’t it? 

And now as the author I take it one step further and something terrible happens to Anna’s daughter in that time. There’s mud on the kitchen floor. Someone has been in the house. But Anna’s daughter won’t say a word. So just how far will Anna have to go to find the truth and keep her daughter safe? How far would you go?

Thankfully, those worst moments, that line we never want to cross, is a rare thing indeed, which is another reason why so many readers are drawn into the fictional worlds of psychological thrillers and their characters just like us. 

Safe At Home by Lauren North (Transworld Publishers) Out Now. 

What if you left your child alone, and something terrible happened? Anna James is an anxious mother. So when she has to leave eleven-year-old Harrie home alone one evening, she can't stop worrying about her daughter. But nothing bad ever happens in the sleepy village of Barton St Martin. Except something goes wrong that night, and Anna returns to find Harrie with bruises she won't explain. The next morning a local businessman is reported missing and the village is sparking with gossip. Anna is convinced there's a connection and that Harrie is in trouble. But how can she protect her daughter if she doesn't know where the danger is coming from?

You can find more information about her and her books on her website and you can also follow her on Twitter @Lauren_C_North

The Most Important Book I Have Written...

Today's guest blog is by author Barbara Nadel.  So far she has written sixteen books featuring Çetin İkmen, a chain-smoking and hard-drinking detective based in Istanbul, four books featuring Francis Hancock an East End undertaker and two books in her Hakim and Arnold series.

As authors we sometimes write books, or parts of books, that are personal or important to us.  There are places and scenes in my books that can exert an emotional pull over me time and time again.  My hope is that maybe my readers will feel the same.  Fortunately both my crime series are set in places that I love, Newham in London and Istanbul, Turkey.  My latest book, Poisoned Ground a Hakim and Arnold mystery set in Newham does however have other, to me, even more important, resonance.

For many years, both before and after I became a writer, I worked in psychiatric hospitals and with mentally ill people in the community.  My longest running job was as a patients advocate in a large psychiatric institution just outside London.  My duties were to represent the views, needs, complaints, and compliments of patients both ‘formal’ (held under Section) and ‘informal’ or voluntary.  I worked on acute, chronic, and forensic wards and one of the most stressful jobs I had was to represent forensic patients (those who had committed offences) at Mental Health Tribunals where their continued incarceration would be discussed and decided.  I had to walk the often-thin line between staff and patients, patients and their illnesses and patients and everyone else.  It probably goes without saying that people with mental health problems are often disbelieved and sometimes what they say is indeed ‘their illness talking’.  But more often than not, it isn’t.  In my experience it is dangerous to make assumptions.

One of our patients was always on about his relative who was a Hollywood movie star.  It seemed very far-fetched even to me.  Until the Hollywood star turned up and embraced our patient.  However, convincing the hospital authorities that something similar (i.e. the truth) may be at play when patients talked about abuse was another matter.  That was like pushing treacle uphill.  Because, unless the case was patient-on-patient abuse, they didn’t want to know.  Some members of staff were known for their brutality and yet any accusations levelled against them were always refuted in the strongest terms.  I have been told, gently, that I’m wrong about these people and, when I persisted, I have been called a liar, aggressively, to my face.  But to this day I stand by what my patients told me.  Not only could I see their injuries, I also have enormous faith in the idea that even the most delusional person knows when he or she has been kicked.  And this lack of belief in the validity of statements made by the mentally ill is one of the central themes of Poisoned Ground.

Total institutions like psychiatric hospitals, are fertile breeding grounds for rumour, supposition and, in some cases, abuse.  All the usual things that are valuable on the outside are currency inside too.  Sex, drugs, booze, money. Except that inside the atmosphere is more pressured and febrile and victims are inclined to remain silent.  So those with ill intent can more easily exploit people supposedly under their care.  They can also terrify other members of staff, who then collude or look the other way.  It takes real guts to be a whistle blower in a total institution, which is something the much-publicised Operation Yewtree is only now making plain.

Poisoned Ground is about what happens when this abuse is systematised.  And as more

actors are dragged into a drama that everyone in the institution knows, on some level, is happening, the more complex and more dangerous the situation becomes.  This world, so familiar to me, is one into which PI Mumtaz Hakim goes in search of a truth she has serious doubts about.  Because you do.

Even with her degree in psychology, Mumtaz, in common with most people, is more likely to disbelieve than believe the stories she hears when she becomes a volunteer advocate at Ilford Psychiatric Hospital.  What’s more, she must wade through the labyrinthine administration of an institution that’s gone bad, where people not only get hurt, but sometimes die as well.  And that has happened, and probably still does.

Stigma has always been with us.  If you label a person or a group ‘wrong’ or ‘other’ and you are more powerful than they are, you can do what you like with them.  Look at the Islamic State and the poor Yazidis and the Christians in Iraq.  Some groups have always, and will always, be targets for prejudice and discrimination.  Not everyone knows that Hitler didn’t start his epic genocide with Jewish people.  First he targeted the mentally ill.  Nobody would care about them.  And he was right, they didn’t.  In psychological terms this phenomenon is known as the ‘latitude of acceptance’.  It works by normalising violence or discrimination against a group that is already largely despised and then extends to others the state, political party or institution wants to get rid of too.

Poisoned Ground is a crime novel written from the bottom of my soul.  Good people work in psychiatric units.  If I have any religion at all it is the National Health Service, which has saved my life, and the Welfare State, which has kept me off the streets.  But it only takes one bad person, particularly one in a position of power, to produce a culture of fear and violence.  However delusional or ‘insane’ we may think someone, we have to start believing them and acting on that belief.  If we don’t, then we get monsters like Jimmy Savile.  Neither celebrity nor expertise can excuse exploitation.  Even the most highly qualified professional needs to earn respect.  Even the most sainted celebrity.

The action that takes place in Poisoned Ground is the most threatening and dangerous that PIs Mumtaz Hakim and Lee Arnold have faced so far.  Not only are they up against a conspiracy of frightening proportions but they also have to confront fears, assumptions, and beliefs they didn’t even know they had.

You can find out more information about Barbara Nadel and her work on her website.  You can also follow her on Twitter @BarbaraNadel.  Barbara also blogs over at International Crime Writers.com.

POISONED GROUND by Barbara Nadel is published by Quercus on 11 September, hardback £19.99.