Thriller Writing and the Anxious Brain By Naomi Williams

I still remember the moment my agent said she could imagine me writing a thriller. I’d written uplifting book-club fiction and family dramas before, but she was spot on; I did harbour a secret desire to tap into my dark side.

Despite her recognising this, I have never thought of myself as having an easily detectable dark side. I am fortunate to have been born an optimist, but my extroversion and outward confidence belie an anxiety which is sometimes hard to manage. You’d think that would stop me from wanting to explore the more tense and scary aspects of this danger-riddled world, but no. I believe my anxious nature is partly what compels me to write psychological thrillers. Here’s why…

During anxious spells, my mind creates reels of worst case scenarios and plays them like films in my head. I can see terrible things happening on my internal screen and, irrationally, my brain tells me that visualising a nightmare situation will stop it from happening. It’s my way of risk-assessing then trying to account for, and mitigate, all eventualities. A faulty system, I admit, and therapy helps.

My brain creates the scenes I’m writing in the same way. In my working life, I invent a situation I need to happen, then type out what I see unfolding in my head. Recently, I’ve come to realise that these processes go hand in hand. In my worries, I’m telling myself stories of what could happen. In my writing, I’m doing the same.

If I combine the two, bingo, we have a thriller!

Hard as it is to believe, when I’m drafting, the process from internal film to fingers is not an entirely conscious one. I don’t always know what’s about to come out before the words are typed. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a planner (even the idea of pantsing brings me out in hives), so I know where the plot is heading, but what I don’t always know is how it will get there. 

A thriller needs red herrings and misdirection on top of the real signposts. Not knowing what these are until they are on the page can be quite the ride in itself. There are a number of scenes in The Woman in Ward 9 that made me shudder as the words appeared on the screen. One in particular made my scalp prickle with fear. It’s dark, and flowed from my fingers without a filter.

But it’s not real. It’s a figment of my anxious mind. What happens in that room on Ward 9 hasn’t happened to me, but I can imagine it vividly and hope that’s transferred onto the page. This is where I think being plagued with anxious thoughts and feelings plays directly into the writer’s hands. I’m an ex-Drama teacher, and used to teach Stanislavski’s technique of emotional memory. This is where the actor uses their true past experiences, a time when they felt a similar emotion, to find the feelings they need to portray in a scene.

The same technique can be applied to writing. You can’t portray an emotion convincingly, unless you have first experienced it. That’s why an anxious person is very well placed to write scary novels. Those feelings are already so near the surface!

Psychology is endlessly fascinating to someone with an unruly brain, and in my thrillers I have the opportunity to explore big questions that trouble many of us. Who can we really trust? Can we ever truly know another person? Can we ever really recover from our past mistakes? What impact does our upbringing have on us? 

In fiction, as in life, every decision a character makes will inform what comes next for them. I can make terrible things happen to my characters, or I can solve all their problems and set them free.

But why would I do that? If my writing is an extension of my brain’s attempt to make my world safe by playing out all the scenarios so they won’t happen to me or the people I love, then fictional people have to suffer. And I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s better for people in books to go through hell than me… or you.

The Woman in Ward 9 by Naomi Williams (Headline Publishers) Out Now.

Laura Winters doesn't know why she has lost her memory, or why she was found alone, soaked in someone else's blood. The only thing she is certain of is that I am the only psychologist she can - or will - talk to. I have six days to help Laura unlock her memories and find out the truth. But what has she forgotten - and what is she hiding? And how does she know so much about me? With tension you could cut with a knife and twists that will have your head spinning, The Woman in Ward 9 is sure to keep you reading late into the night.

You can find Naomi on X @LTimoneyWrites. You can also find her on Facebook and on Instagram.

Forthcoming books from Bookouture

 January 2025

Family Doctor is by J M Dalgliesh. I have three days to kill a patient. If I fail, my daughter will die… As the only doctor on a stunning remote Scottish island, I finally feel safe and happy. Here, nobody knows about my troubled past except my teenage daughter Lauren. I'm a single mother, so it’s just the two of us now, and Lauren is my world. Caring for every person on the island, from birth to death, I know all their fears and secrets. But they don’t know mine, and for the sake of my daughter, I must keep it that way… Everything is going perfectly until I am sent a link to a live video stream of my beautiful daughter Lauren, her wide blue eyes terrified. And there’s a voice: ‘Three rules. Three days. You must murder one of your patients. You must not tell another soul. You must not get caught. If you fail, your daughter dies…’

I know it’s him. He says we’ve never met. Why would he lie?  Her - When I see him, my heart stops dead. I tell myself it’s impossible, but I would recognise those striking pale blue eyes anywhere. It’s him. The high-school boyfriend I adored… Until the day he vanished without a trace. I run towards him, my pulse racing. He turns, politely, a puzzled look on that familiar face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘Do I know you?’ I need answers. I’m certain he’s lying. I just have to prove it. Him - Of course you recognised me. Always so keen, always trying to do right by everyone. It’s typical of my bad luck that we happened to run into each other. I left this place for a reason – one you never knew. And now I’m back, I have plans. And I’m afraid, my dear, that you’re getting in my way… The Perfect Boyfriend is by S E Lynes.

What Kind of Mother is by Anna-Lou Weatherley. My son and his girlfriend stand there, two terrified teenagers shivering in the doorway, and say the unthinkable. ‘I think we killed someone.’ Now, I have to decide exactly what kind of mother I am… It was never my dream to clean the Levinsons’ mansion for a living, particularly as Helen Levinson and her daughter Paris are oddly secretive about which rooms I can go into.But none of that matters the night Paris and my son Conor come begging for help, their clothes spattered with blood. They say it was an accident, that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time… Now, Helen and I have to make a terrible choice. Do we tell the truth and risk losing our children forever? Or do we lie to keep them safe? We will do anything to protect our children, but one wrong move could cost us everything. Lying to the police was a risk, and now Helen is acting more unpredictable by the day – turning up at my house unannounced, harassing my husband, telling lies about my past… The only way to save my family is to uncover the truth about that night. I’m convinced the answers lie hidden inside the Levinsons’ house. I’d do anything for Conor, but am I prepared for what I might find behind locked doors? But when your son is in danger, you find out what kind of mother you are…

She’s perfect. Too perfect… Wife: For twenty-five years, my husband and I have been the ideal couple. I’m shy, but he’s always been the life and soul of the party, a charmer, so I didn’t worry the first time I caught him a little too close to my best friend, Wendy. Mother: Then our darling son says he’s taking Wendy’s daughter to prom, the girl I never trusted because she’s too much like her mother. As I snap photos of them, I have a smile plastered on my face, but inside my head I’m screaming at him to stay away from her. Liar: As flashing lights slice the darkness around our home, my worst nightmare comes true with the shocking news that one of our children is dead. And I can tell my husband, my best friend are both lying about where they were. But none of their secrets compares to mine. And nobody knows just how far I’d go to protect my family… Wife, Mother, Liar is by Sue Watson.

Gripping the phone, my hands tremble with fear. I look at my son and wonder how my darling blue-eyed boy could have done this. But as my eyes focus down on the body, I know what I must do. I know it will destroy our lives forever. 'Hello? I need help. It’s my child. He’s killed someone.' As my son looks at me, his eyes pleading for help, all I can think in that moment is that I will do whatever it takes to protect him. A young girl’s lifeless body lies on the ground and my heart breaks when I realise I’m already too late to save her. Our family will never be the same again. I know I should call for help. But looking towards the phone table I see an old picture of the children playing in the garden. Our children and hers. We used to be so close, I thought our families would be together for a lifetime. But in a moment of rage, the life I imagined has been snatched away. But if I’m honest, I’ve been kidding myself about how perfect our lives were. I’m a mother. I should be able to keep my children safe. But what I see in front of me cannot be denied. No one else is here. My son’s guilty. How far will I go to protect him? The Mother's Phone Call is by Victoria Jenkins.

May Day should mark the start of spring. But this year, it means murder… Fortunately antique store owner and amateur detective Bella Winter is on the case!  Everyone in Hope Eaton climbs the hill to Sweet Agnes’ Spring on May Day, to greet the dawn and leave tokens among the flowers. Antique store owner Bella Winter grumbles about the early start, but she has to admit that watching the sun rise over the flower-strewn grove is worth it. And her interest deepens when she sees that one of the offerings this year is a little doll stuck all over with pins… a perfect replica of Mary Roberts, who lives nearby. Determined to find out what lies behind this bizarre threat, Bella dives into a murky mess of strange events. Mary’s house is up for sale, but someone’s trying to wreck the deal, leaving rotting weeds on her front step. And Mary claims she’s seen a cloaked figure watching her from the woods… Bella’s half convinced this is all nonsense, but then Mary is found dead, her prized carving of the spring stolen from her dresser. The police say it was a heart attack, but was she literally scared to death? Soon Bella has uncovered a string of further mysteries. Why is Mary’s nearest neighbour missing? Who graffitied her boss’s house with a warning the night she died? And why would anyone want Mary’s carving? All paths lead back to the spring itself… but does it hold answers or more danger? And can Bella track the killer down before she’s cut off at the source? The Antique Store Detective and the May Day Murder is by Clare Chase.

The Husband is by Daniel Hurst. Is the man you love a killer? I’ve been married to my kind, loving husband Lachlan for over twenty years. He’s my everything. We have two teenage children, a beautiful home and I feel so lucky to live this perfect life. Until my best friend says something that makes me doubt everything… She whispers it’s strange Lachlan has lived nearby to two unsolved murder cases. First, the murder of the woman in the small, Scottish village where he grew up and more recently the shocking death of a woman who lived round the corner from us. The thought makes my head spin. It’s just a coincidence, surely? But at home, I can’t help but notice that Lachlan’s becoming angry, not at all like his usual self. It makes me wonder if he’s hiding something from me. It makes me wonder if he could be guilty. I push the thought away, but no matter what, I can’t get rid of this niggle of doubt. The only way to find out is to go to Scotland and get my husband to face his past. But when secrets start to unravel in the remote Scottish Highlands, I realise the truth is more complicated than I thought, and more than one person could be a killer. Now my children and I are in terrible danger. And coming here might be the last mistake I ever make.

“Megan, you need to call me. Wallace was here. He left a message to say please don’t worry. He’s coming for you soon.” As I hang up the call, my blood runs cold. I’ve spent a lifetime running from this man. But as I look down at his next victim, their face frozen in one final moment of fear, I can’t escape the feeling that I will be next to die. When the body of Detective Susan Dupont is discovered lying across the dividing line of two counties, Detective Megan Carpenter is immediately called to the scene. When her body is examined they find a sharp piece of metal has been lodged in her eye. A detail that takes Megan back to a deeply-buried memory which she has long been running from. Twenty-four hours later, retired Detective Riley Denton is found dead at home. His death is deemed a tragic accident. He fell down the stairs and had no enemies. Why would anyone want him dead? But Megan feels sure there is a link to the deaths and there is only one person she can trust with her theory. Calling in the help of her partner Detective Ronnie Marsh, they start to piece together a link that places Megan right at the centre of a deadly plot. As they race to find the killer before they strike closer to home, a string of murder victims going back years starts to emerge. And when Megan discovers how the murders are linked, she has to finally accept a dark truth she has spent her life running from. A killer from her past is back just like they promised and they will stop at nothing to take everything she loves. Can Megan stop them dead in their tracks or will she pay the ultimate price? Final Victim is by Gregg Olson.

Stolen Baby is by L G Davis. I told everyone she is my baby. I lied. My life changes forever when my little girl appears in a basket on my doorstep, her long lashes fluttering, only a few hours old. She’s so tiny and precious; my heart is hers in an instant. My husband Tom and I have always longed for a child, so we agree not to tell the authorities. We won’t risk them taking her away. And I know if they find out my history, they’d never let me keep her… I’m so grateful to have my beautiful baby, who we call Daisy. But while Tom refuses to talk about it, I can’t stop wondering who her biological parents are and why they left her with us? Then someone sends me a message, enclosing it in a funeral programme I find on my kitchen table. Now I know the terrible truth about what happened to Daisy’s parents, and it’s closer to home than I could ever have imagined. I thought I could protect us all, despite my past mistakes. But when the secrets I uncover put my family’s lives at risk, how far will I go to keep the little girl I love?

I’m home,’ she says, standing at my door with a sky-blue backpack clutched tightly to her chest. I haven’t seen my granddaughter in years. But I know she’s hiding a deadly secret…It’s been ten years since I last saw Stephanie, but looking into her haunted eyes, she looks just as innocent as she did as a baby. I remember the photo of her wrapped in a little pink blanket; how my heart hurt not to hold her on the day she was born. Pulling her in to a tight embrace, I promise her that although she’s lost her mother, I will take care of her from now on. No matter what… But as I usher her inside, I can’t help wondering if Stephanie knows my secrets. The real reason I hadn’t seen her mother in years… or why she wasn’t ever allowed to visit me at my house. Did my daughter take our family secrets to the grave? Stephanie’s heart breaks when she talks about her mother. But soon details slip out about the night she died, and I begin to realise that my granddaughter is just as good a liar as I am… Stephanie says my daughter's death was an accident, but I’m not so sure. If I uncover my granddaughter’s secrets, will I be next? The Perfect Guest is by Casey Kelleher.

Her Hiding Place is by Shannon Hollinger. “Okay sweetheart,” I whisper, giving my little girl Alice a final kiss. “Now remember, after I’ve locked the door, be quiet like a mouse. I’ll come back later, I promise.” Her little face crumples as I turn to leave and my heart breaks. But I have no choice. I have to work, and I have to keep her hidden. It’s just ten days until the new hotel opens. As I push my cleaning cart into the chandeliered honeymoon suite, I wonder how it would feel to stay here as a guest. To watch the sun rise over the ocean, to fall asleep with no fear. I’ll never know, of course. Instead, I work twelve-hour days as a maid, constantly frightened of discovery. Alice is just three, and she’s already seen more than any child should. Hiding on this isolated island resort, where she can only come out at night, is so hard for her. But the other staff can’t know she’s here, let alone the guests when they arrive. And no one can know my secret—or what we’re really running from. But when a massive storm cuts the island off from the mainland, my darkest fears become real. A body is found and in the shocking aftermath, someone finds out about Alice… With no means of escape, I know we are stuck on the island with a killer. Someone has been hiding in plain sight, waiting for an opportunity to make their move. Then my worst nightmare comes true and Alice disappears. I know I can trust no one. How far will I have to go to find her? And what will happen when they find out who Alice really is…?

Keep it in the Family Q & A with John Marrs

 Q:- In your own words, tell us a little about Keep It in the Family.

A:- It follows a young married couple, Finn and Mia, who buy a property that needs much renovation work. However, when pregnant Mia begins decorating the nursery, she find a message etched into the skirting boards. It reads, ‘I will save them from the attic.’ Together with her fractious in-laws, they go into the attic and discover it’s much smaller than the floorplan suggests – there’s a hidden room that has been bricked up. And inside, they find seven suitcases, each with a pile of children’s clothes in front of them. The novel is told from four perspectives, along with the person responsible for the secrets the house is hiding. 

Q:- The core idea of the book came to you in a dream. Would you be able to expand upon that? 

A:- It was literally just that. I’ve had dreams before with story ideas and I’ve woken up, telling myself I’ll remember them in the morning but failing to do so. I’ve also other dreams that seemed amazing at 3am but in the cold light of day, they’re just awful! For this book, I dreamed about a couple who bought a house and found suitcases in the loft complete with piles of clothing in front of them. I woke myself up, dictated it into my phone and fell back to sleep. Two days later I remembered vaguely dreaming about a plot, checked it my notes section and thought ‘I might be on to something here.’ By the end of the week, I had my entire story and characters mapped out. 

Q:- You’ve explored disturbed family relations in some of your previous books, including What Lies Between Us. What is it about this that you are keen to explore?

A:- I think I enjoy writing about twisted family relationships because the lives and experiences of my characters are so far removed from my own. My mum and dad were together until my father died 18 years ago, I’m happily married with a wonderful almost-three-year old. My life is nothing like those I write about. I like putting my cast through the wringer, making them suffer and seeing what comes out the other side for them. Some learn from their mistakes, others don’t. Maybe I’m living vicariously through them and and working out how far I’d need to be pushed before I reach breaking point.

Q:- Children are often in danger in your books. As a parent yourself, can this be hard to write about? 

A:- I purposefully don’t go into any great detail about what happens to the children in this book. I hope I give the reader just enough for them to use their own imagination and decide the hows and wherefores. What I found most disturbing was a book I read when researching what it must be like to have a killer in the family. Love As Always, Mum by Fred and Rosemary West’s daughter Mae is more disturbing than any fictional story a writer could come up with.

Q:- The early days of parenthood are so vividly drawn in Keep It In The Family. Did you draw on your own experience of fatherhood? 

A:- For some parts, yes. Our son was born two months prematurely, like Mia’s baby, and he spent the first month of his life in hospital. So I drew on experience of what a worrying time that was for my characters. He is now three so those sleepless lights, self-doubt, panic and apprehension you’re doing it all wrong are still very fresh in my mind! But to be honest, he’s been a great little lad and has made it relatively easy for us. 

Q:- Covid and lockdown make a couple of appearances. Why did you choose to include references to the pandemic, and how challenging was the experience of writing during lockdown? 

A:- I don’t think I could pretend it hadn’t happened, particularly with the dates this book was set in. But I didn’t want it to take precedence over the story. I didn’t include Covid at all in my original drafts, but my editor persuaded me to change my mind. It was the right thing to do or it would be like setting a book in the late 1940s and failing to mention World War 2. Its omittance would have stood out more than its inclusion. 

Q:- You write both speculative fiction and crime thrillers. What’s the process of writing them – do you write both simultaneously, or do you alternate?

A:- I alternate. But I usually have three books on the go at any one time. The one I have just started, the one I’m working on rewrites for with my editor, and the plotting out of the next. I am fortunate to be able to write two different styles of novel for two different publishers who are very patient with each other! So I’m able to alternate books – a speculative for one publisher and then a crime thriller for the next. My brain is constantly buzzing.

Q:- The One was adapted for Netflix last year. How has this changed your life? 

A:- On a day-to-day basis, I don’t know if it has really. But it has perhaps made me more widely known than I was and it’s helped to sell a lot more copies of The One. And as a result, my back catalogue sales have also expanded. Another result has been a project I’ve been working on for my social media channels. I started approaching other authors I didn’t know personally but admired, asking them to take part in my 60 Second Interview challenge on Instagram. And it surprised me how many said yes, and how many of them had heard of me through the Netflix series. So it’s opened up doors that way. I’ve also since had three other books optioned by different production companies so fingers crossed something might happen with them too. It was a very surreal time through, watching on television something I created in my head one evening on the way home from work, then becoming the number one most watched show in the world on Netflix that week. 

Keep It in The Family by John Marrs (Thomas & Mercer) Out Now

Mia and Finn are busy turning a derelict house into their dream home. At last, they’ll be able to move out of Finn’s parents’ house and start living alone. In the midst of this, Mia falls unexpectedly pregnant, adding a sense of urgency to the renovations. But just as the house is nearly ready, Mia discovers a chilling message scored into a skirting board: I WILL SAVE THEM FROM THE ATTIC. Following this clue up to the eaves, the couple are shocked to find that their dream home was once a house of horrors. In the wake of the traumatic discovery, their baby arrives early. Plagued by nightmares and struggling with motherhood, Mia becomes increasingly obsessed with the terrible crimes that happened in what was to be their new home. Maybe once she uncovers the truth, she’ll be able to focus on her new baby boy Sonny. But in doing so, she is alienating her husband, and risking the fragile relationship between her and in-laws. Meanwhile, the terrible secrets the house has revealed are not confined to the past. A murderer is watching, and waiting for the perfect moment to strike... Mia will do anything to protect her son, but is it already too late? 

More information about John Marrs and his work can be found on his website. You can also find him on Facebook, On Twitter @johnmarrs1 and on Instagram @johnmarrs.author

A Strange Topic for a Thriller by J P Delaney

I was researching real-life accounts of people’s interactions with social workers for a previous novel when I noticed how many were about adopted teenagers who’d tracked down their birth families online. Sometimes the stories had happy outcomes – the teenagers were able to get some answers about who they were and where they’d come from. But there were enough that were messy, or simply fraught with peril, to make me jot down in my ideas book: Adoption reunion - goes wrong?

Coming back to that note months later, I dug into the topic some more, and discovered something that to me seemed extraordinary. Here in the UK, adoptees’ birth certificates are sealed until they turn eighteen, and contact after that is meant to be possible only if both parties separately sign up for a government register. But the reality, according to the Adoption Society, is that over a quarter of adoptees now contact their birth families before then. The reason they can do this is the unintended consequence of a well-meant policy: since 2005, it has been a statutory requirement for social workers to leave a ‘Later Life letter’ with the adoptive parents, explaining exactly who the child’s birth parents were, and the circumstances surrounding their adoption.

The Later Life letter is written for the adopted child to read when they’re old enough to understand it. The exact timing is left up to the adoptive parents, but according to the guidance they’re given, that’s usually when the child is about twelve. (The notion that under-sixteens or under-eighteens are ‘minors’ has now largely been replaced in our legal system by the idea that capacity and responsibility is a sliding scale, the so-called ‘Gillick competency’ rule; ironically, named after a campaigner who thought the very opposite – Victoria Gillick was trying to prevent under-sixteens from being given contraception without their parents’ consent.)

The Later Life letter therefore gets read at a time in life when any young person is beginning to wrestle with their identity, and to pull away from their family unit as they become more independent. For children who were adopted, that natural process can be exacerbated. Therapists use the term ‘ghost kingdoms’ to describe the way some create seductive fantasies of what their ‘real’ parents might be like. Add to that the fact that some will also have attachment issues stemming from early neglect, or simply from the process of being taken into care, and you can see why the urge to break away can be a powerful one.

It works the other way round, too. For mothers whose babies were adopted, it can leave a hole in their life which never entirely shrinks. It’s a claim much repeated (though also much contested) that the UK carries out more ‘forced’ adoptions – that is, adoptions by court order against the parent’s wishes – than any other European country. Many of those mothers may also be searching for traces of their birth children. 

As I began fleshing out my research and giving it the shape of a thriller, I was acutely aware that I was dealing with issues that, for many people, are all too real. My Darling Daughter is about a rebellious fifteen-year-old who finds her birth mother online, and discovers that she appears to have the perfect life – married to a rock musician, wealthy, with a gorgeous Instagram-worthy house and no other children. But it turns out there are details in the Later Life letter that don’t quite tally with the glamorous image the mother’s been presenting, and there are hidden dangers for both characters as their very different worlds collide.

Adoption in fiction is of course nothing new – it was a staple of Victorian ‘sensation’ writers like Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, who used it to explore issues relevant to the age, such as status and social mobility. But in the era of Facebook and Instagram, adoption also throws up new questions of the kind central to any domestic noir – questions of identity, loyalty and trust, not to mention how well we really know our nearest and dearest, with nothing less than your whole family unit at stake. It’s a sensitive subject – one I’ve tried to approach tactfully – but it’s also a fascinating one, and a cracking starting point for a psychological drama. My characters certainly aren’t typical – most adoptions are successful, as are most adoption reunions – but they are meant to be authentic, and I hope my readers will enjoy the twisty and sometimes mind-bending journey they’re about to embark on together.

My Darling Daughter by J P Delaney (Quercus) Out Now

The child you never knew knows all your secrets... Out of the blue, Susie Jukes is contacted on social media by Anna, the girl she gave up for adoption fifteen years ago. But when they meet, Anna's home life sounds distinctly strange to Susie and her husband Gabe. And when Anna's adoptive parents seem to overreact to the fact she contacted them at all, Susie becomes convinced that Anna needs her help. But is Anna's own behaviour simply what you'd expect from someone recovering from a traumatic childhood? Or are there other secrets at play here - secrets Susie has also been hiding for the last fifteen years?

More information about J P Delaney can be found on his website.

‘The Talented Mr Ripley’ and ‘Out of Her Depth’ by Lizzy Barber

‘Tom envied him with a heart-breaking surge of envy and self-pity’ writes Patricia Highsmith of Dickie Greenleaf in the early chapters of The Talented Mr Ripley. Tom, a penniless upstart but excellent impersonator, has managed to worm his way into the affections of Dickie’s father, who at the start of the novel sends Tom on a reconnaissance trip to the small (fabricated) Italian town of Mongibello, where Dickie has escaped to, to try and persuade him to return to America. Only, when Tom arrives in Italy, he discovers that Dickie has no intention of returning home. And, more to the point, neither does Tom. 

I am not the first reader or author to be captivated by Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley novels. In Tom, she created a true antihero; an underdog and unreliable narrator we somehow still root for; and in his idol, Dickie Greenleaf, Dickie’s girlfriend Marge and a band of wealthy expats, she creates a world that we, along with Tom, love to hate. Her clean, well-measured prose shines a light on every facet of their intoxicating world and has created an enduring legacy which has seen multiple adaptations – including the recent announcement of a new Talented Mr Ripley television series starring Fleabag’s Andrew Scott in the titular role. 

Out of Her Depth is a psychological thriller about an unassuming young woman, Rachel, who receives an incredible opportunity to work at a beautiful hotel in the Florentine Hills, where she meets the magnetic but dangerous Diana and the dashing but careless Sebastian. She is drawn into their privileged circle and luxuriates in their world of glamourous parties and exotic trips…until something goes wrong. It is not a reworking of the original, but there are themes and events (not least the Romantic Italian setting) which I was keen to explore in my work. And what drew me to Tom, and indeed the most in Out of Her Depth, was exactly that initial quote: his intermixed feelings of envy and self-pity.

Rachel, like Tom Ripley, is an outsider, a voyeur. By chance, she finds herself part of this impossible new world, but although she does step inside it, she is still painfully aware of her ‘otherness,’ that she will never truly fit in. As Tom’s friendship with Dickie blooms, he emulates him: he takes on his words and phrases, he begins to dress like him, he even wants to learn to speak Italian as good as Dickie’s. Highsmith, to allude to a spoiler (and if this is a spoiler for you, I’d say stop reading this now and get the book!), takes this to the extreme: Tom murders Dickie and fully impersonates him: but even then he constantly feels that he is only a poor copy. Diana frequently makes Rachel aware of her differences – ‘you shouldn’t nod like that,’ ‘it’s bathroom, not bafroom’ – telling her what to eat, buying her the right clothes, and under her tutelage Rachel begins to reinvent herself. 

Diana, much like Dickie to Tom, sees Rachel as a pet, a fun project to work on, and Rachel, blossoming under her attention, laps it up. The book is set in past and present day, and in the present, we see Rachel’s bitterness at never fully conforming: her realisation that she will never truly match Diana: and that realisation is an ugly thing, as ugly as Tom’s murder of Dickie. 

There has been much discussion about Ripley’s sexuality – his fascination with Dickie and subsequent hatred for Marge - but regardless of what Highsmith’s intentions were (she herself remained agnostic on the subject), I think what is rife in the book is a palpable desire. Tom wants Dickie; he wants to be Dickie; he wants Dickie to want him. His feelings are intense and intoxicating. This is what I wanted to explore with Rachel and Diana: Rachel has romantic feelings for Sebastian, but the friendship she has with Diana is all encompassing. It is that heady expression of teenage female friendship that is confusing and, for Rachel, toxic: she is so intoxicated by Diana’s good parts that she cannot see anything bad. And that desire turns into an obsession that long outlasts their teenage Summer…and begins to have deadly consequences…

Out of Her Depth by Lizzy Barber (Out Now) Pan Macmillan

There are summers that will change your life. There are summers that may end it. In the lush green hills beyond Florence sits the Villa Medici-a graceful pensione surrounded by manicured gardens. Rachel, a college student from an outer London suburb, can't believe her luck in landing a summer job here. Especially when she's drawn into a circle of privileged young sophisticates, including her glamorous co-worker Diana, who promises to help Rachel win the affections of handsome, confident Sebastian. But as champagne flows and rivalries fester in the Tuscan countryside, Rachel realizes that Diana has motivations of her own. Adrift in a world of backstabbing and bed-hopping, lavish parties and easy betrayal, Rachel feels the stakes rising along with the temperatures until, one night, something snaps. Someone dies. And nothing will ever be the same...

More information about Lizzy Barber can be found on her website. You can also follow her on Twitter @ByLizzyBarber and on Instagram @bylizzybarber

Sheryl Browne - Inspiration Comes In Many Guises

 

I’m often asked what inspires me to write crime and psychological thriller. The short answer is people. I’m fascinated by what shapes people. A writer’s mind thrives on exploration. Every scenario, every place, every face tells a story. 

When I’m not writing I can usually be found messing about on the water with my partner in our little narrowboat, Aquaduck, which I can also often be found falling off. I kid you not. Coming into moor one evening, I fell off the stern end. My partner didn’t notice I’d gone. Needless to say, when I surfaced my words were choice. Yes, we’re still together. In fact, I married him. Now there’s the nucleus for a psych thriller plot if ever I saw one. 

It’s perhaps hard to imagine how the tranquil British waterways might entice my mind to conjure up murder or psychological torture. Bear with me. So, boating actually being quite a strenuous activity – there are many heavy locks that have to be worked to get the boat from A to B – we tend to moor up as near as we can to a pub for our evening meals. Sometimes the spots we moor in can be very remote and the pub can be a long way off, involving a trek along the towpath with nothing but the wind whispering through the trees and the eerie calls of nightlife for company. 

Hold in mind here my last reads at the time were The Ladykiller by Martina Cole, who definitely fuelled my desire to delve into the darker side of human nature. I love how Cole gets inside the head of her characters. It’s with morbid fascination you glimpse into the mind of a sexually depraved killer. Also, It by the fabulous Stephen King, which spooked me so much I could see clowns smiling evilly at me through sluice gates. Thus was my mindset on one eerie moon-free evening when we set off along the people-less towpath to the local hostelry. Wined and dined and a weave to our walk, we made the return journey, no light to guide is, other than a dodgy flashlight – river banks and canal banks are sadly lacking in streetlights – and no sound other than the low swoop of a heron and the snap of twigs underfoot. 

Nearing the boat, I was surprised to spot someone parked in the sparsely populated country lane running parallel to the canal. A chill of apprehension ran through me. Why, I wondered suspiciously, would a lone driver just be sitting there in the dead of night? My mind then immediately going into writer mode, I was soon playing the ‘what if’ game. What if… he’s a burglar? A psychopathic mad-axe murderer? An arsonist? A ladykiller! 

Imagine my trepidation therefore when, on reaching the boat, my partner announced he’d left something in the pub and promptly about-faced back down the towpath to retrieve it, leaving me with the strange night-watcher and my vivid imagination. On my own on the boat – with those branches snapping and a lone owl hooting outside, it wasn’t long before the man had morphed into … a hitman! Obviously, my partner was after the life insurance and I would soon be found floating bloated in the canal (please remember my tendency to fall in. It was a full proof plan!). 

Panicking now, I searched frantically for something with which to defend myself. The rubber ring, I decided, possibly wasn’t an effective weapon with which to fend off a hitman. The front hatch of the boat was padlocked, I had no phone signal, and the only other way out was the door he would surely imminently enter by. 

Hour long minutes ticked by as I waited, my heart thrashing feverishly. Then, finally, the doors stern-end creaked open and a figure silhouetted against the night-sky appeared – and promptly fell about laughing. 

My ‘hitman’, my partner informed me, had apparently broken down and was waiting for the rescue service. Personally, I wasn’t amused. The poor man could have been rubber-ringed to death. 

So, that’s where my inspiration comes from. Reading sparks my imagination. People create the story. In My Husband's Girlfriend, I started with a simple premise: You’re meeting the woman who might become your little boy’s stepmother for the first time. On the surface, she’s perfect, but your every instinct screams at you that something is very wrong.

Right, time for another boat trip, I think. Minus the hitman.

My Husband's Girlfriend by Sheryl Browne (Published by Bookouture) Out Now

Tucking her little boy Ollie into bed one night, Sarah notices his beloved teddy bear, which she bought him when he was born, is missing and in its place is a new toy given to him by her ex-husband’s new girlfriend, Laura. When she asks Ollie about it, he begins to shift uncomfortably, before whispering ‘Laura told me a big secret and she said I can never tell you’. Sarah’s heart sinks. But when she raises her concerns, nobody wants to listen. To everyone else, Laura is the perfect stepmother and Sarah is just the jealous ex-wife. But Sarah knew the moment she met Laura she couldn’t trust her, from her overly perfect stepmother act to the way she evaded questions about her own history. Soon Ollie is asking to spend more time with his dad and Laura, and shrinking away from Sarah. Then, when she calls to him in the garden one day, Ollie doesn’t answer back. The garden is silent. Ollie’s sandpit is empty. Ollie has disappeared.

More information about the author can be found on her website.  You can also follow her on Twitter @SherylBrowne and on Facebook.