Stephanie Marland on The Creepy Fascination of Abandoned Places

For me there’s something pulse-poundingly creepy and yet utterly fascinating about abandoned places, and that makes them the perfect setting for a crime novel. 

I’ve had a love of abandoned places ever since I was a child. Back when I was young, my Nanna took me to visit the long forgotten Italian gardens in the grounds of Halton House, Buckinghamshire. The stately mansion had originally been owned by the Rothschild family (complete with private zoo, tropical gardens and the Italian-inspired gardens) but after being given to the Ministry of Defence in the war and turned into an RAF base; the outer gardens had been long forgotten. To my child eyes the secret gardens were like entering another world.

Nature had reclaimed the once manicured lawns, trees had grown through the iron rose pagodas, toppling many to the ground, and the once trained roses had spread, winding their way across bushes and trees, untamed and free. 

I stepped through the wrought iron gates (luckily open a few feet) and stopped. The white and pink marble mosaic path was almost entirely covered with brambles. At the far end stood the summerhouse, a beautiful stone building with a domed roof. Slowly we made our way along the overgrown path towards it. I was in awe. Creepers had wound their way inside, curling up the walls, through the cracks in the plasterwork, and across the fresco painted ceiling. It was like no other place I’d seen.

I didn’t get the idea of uses abandoned places as a setting until many years later. That happened when I was taking a cruise down the Thames and spotted an abandoned film studio across the water. The fenced off grounds, and the boarded up windows got my mind whirring. What would it be like to go inside the old studios? What would you find there?

In that moment, from those questions, I got the idea for the opening of You Die Next – a group of urban explorers breaking into an abandoned film studio and stumbling into a murderer’s kill room. I pulled out my phone and frantically tapped some notes. 

As research for the book I’ve watched videos posted online by explorers far more daring than I. I’ve seen them riding Ferris Wheels at long abandoned theme parks, exploring derelict old mansions, and climbing through the half-built levels of urban high-rise construction. 

But when I think of abandoned places something always draws me back to the beauty of the abandoned garden at Halton House. Over the thirty or so years since I first went there with my Nanna I’ve been back many times. I’ve seen the awe-inspiring power of nature as she’s continued to reclaim the place as her own. I’ve noticed how one-by-one all the rose pagodas fell, how the mosaic path began to crumble, and how after one particularly ferocious storm a tree branch fell onto the summerhouse and the domed roof caved in. 

I wanted to go back when I was researching You Die Next, and I tried to, but was unsuccessful. In recent years the security on the RAF base has been raised higher and the opportunities to get access are near on impossible. Perhaps if I had the tenacity of the group of urbexers in You Die Next I would have succeeded. As it is, the sign ‘Attack dogs on patrol’ put me off! 

You Die Next by Stephanie Marland (Published by Orion Publishing)

When a group of urban explorers stumble across a murderer's kill room in a derelict film studio, terror strikes. And when one of the group is found dead, the team realise - they're being hunted.  DI Dominic Bell is investigating the murder, but as the body count rises, time is running out. The only person who can help him is a figure from his past, Clementine Starke - but Clementine is haunted by her own demons. Can the two of them pair up to catch the killer? Or is it already too late?

The trailer for You Die Next can be seen below.

Creating Character: Clementine Starke

I always wanted Clementine Starke to be rather unconventional as a character but it took me a number of drafts of the book before I finally figured her out. From the start, I’d had the idea of a reclusive young woman, damaged by an incident in her past that still haunted her, but trying to make her way back into the real world through connecting with people on social media who shared her interest in true crime. The tricky part was getting the balance right.

When the book begins, due to the incident in her past, Clementine doesn’t feel emotion. She’s not a sociopath or psychopath in the traditional sense – she was able to feel emotion as a child – but trauma from an incident left her with a prevailing feeling of ‘nothingness’. In the first draft of the book I didn’t know what exactly had caused this. I’m not a writer who plots the story out in advance – preferring to ‘pants’ it, writing by the ‘seat of my pants’. This made writing Clementine tough. The storyline of her teaming up with the true crime addicts who she met online in the forum of website True Crime London flowed easy enough, but her inner thoughts and deepest motivations evaded me. It was a frustrating time.

In my mind she was a determined female lead, a strong woman, refusing to be kept down by her traumatic past. But I couldn’t write her like a typical action heroine, because although she was the driving force of the story she was also reclusive and doubting. Her behaviour was less predictable, her decisions more erratic. Yet, she wasn’t like Amy, the psychopathic lead character in Gillian Flynn’s amazing thriller Gone Girl. Clementine wasn’t born without empathy; she was made that way by the incident. It always came back to the incident. And yet even at the end of the first draft I still didn’t know what had happened.

I got feedback on the book, and set about improving it in the second draft. I rewrote my detective, Dominic Bell’s, side of the story relatively quickly. I felt it was taking shape. But Clementine’s voice, and her inner world, still eluded me. I wanted her to be strong but vulnerable, make bad choices that put others in danger but somehow still likable, and I wanted her to feel emotionful, even when she couldn’t feel and understand the emotions herself. I needed to know what happened in her backstory. I had to know more about the incident.

In the end, the key to Clementine’s character – the motivation that drives everything in her life – and her own voice, came to me in the middle of the night. It woke me up. But it wasn’t divine intervention or ‘the muse’ or anything mystical that helped me, it was Gillian Flynn. Not actual Gillian Flynn in person, obviously, but something she’d said in an interview. Earlier that day I’d been watching a youtube video of her The National Writers Series appearance, speaking about her writing process and creating characters. It’s a great talk – I recommend you check it out – and I’m pretty sure that’s what kicked my subconscious into overdrive to figure out what the hell I was going to do with the Clementine.

I woke up with the opening paragraph to Clementine’s chapter in my head, and a sudden realisation of what the incident was, so I groped for my notebook (always on the floor by my bed) and scribbled down the lines that are still the opening lines in chapter one:

They say I was dead for three thousand and six seconds. They say that when I woke I was different, but I don’t know if that’s true. What I do know is that my world became a different place once every one of those precious seconds had expired.

Then I got up, took my notebook with me, made myself a mug of coffee and sat down at my desk. I spent the rest of the night writing Clementine Starke.

My Little Eye by Stephanie Marland published by Trapeze Books

Can a group of true crime addicts take on the police to catch a serial killer?

KISS THE GIRLS… A young woman is found dead in her bedroom surrounded by rose petals - the latest victim of 'The Lover'. Struggling under the weight of an internal investigation, DI Dominic Bell is no closer to discovering the identity of the killer and time is running out.  AND MAKE THEM DIE...  As the murders escalate, Clementine Starke joins an online true crime group determined to take justice in their own hands - to catch the killer before the police. Hiding a dark secret, she takes greater risks to find new evidence and infiltrate the group.  As Starke and Bell get closer to cracking the case neither of them realise they're being watched. The killer is closer to them than they think, and he has his next victim - Clementine - firmly in his sights.

Books to look forward to from Orion

July 2017

Renee Ballard works the night shift in Hollywood, beginning many investigations but finishing none as each morning she turns her cases over to day shift detectives. A once up-and-coming detective, she’s been given this beat as punishment after filing a sexual harassment complaint against a supervisor. But one night she catches two cases she doesn’t want to part with: the brutal beating of a prostitute left for dead in a parking lot and the killing of a young woman in a nightclub shooting. Ballard is determined not to give up at dawn. Against orders and her own partner’s wishes, she works both cases by day while maintaining her shift by night. As the cases entwine, they pull her closer to her own demons and the reason she won’t give up her job no matter what the department throws at her. The Late Show is by Michael Connelly.

Miri Goldstein was a call girl with connections to powerful men. Now that she's dead, some can   You Don’t Know Me is by Brooke Magnanti.
breathe more easily. But the grave is not always good at keeping secrets. As the media dig into Miri's past, her old friend Denise worries that her own will rise to the surface. Meanwhile in Scotland, controversial forensic pathologist Harriet Hitchin is put in a bind when the body turns up on her patch. Police think they have their killer but Harriet is certain they made a mistake. If she's wrong, it will end her career. If she's right it could cost her life.The case will play games with all who come near and force them to ask - how many of us are living a lie?

August 2017

Bad Move is by Linwood Barclay.  Zack Walker is a writer with an overactive imagination and two teenage children. After a murder on their street, he uproots his family from the city - insisting it's for their own good - and heads for the security of the suburbs. However, his peaceful new life is soon shattered when he finds a body while out walking by the creek. Zack recognizes the dead man - and knows who his killer might be. Things go from bad to worse as Zack follows a trail of deceit that leads right to his front door. To protect his family - and so he doesn't get framed for a crime he didn't commit - he's going to have to track down the killer himself. Suddenly the suburbs are not looking nearly so safe.

September 2017

Much to his family's relief, stay-at-home writer Zack Walker finally gets a job outside of the house. Surely, becoming a journalist will keep his overactive imagination in check . . . Now in full-time employment, Zack's protective instincts must work over-time to keep his kids safe from dangers real and imagined.  But while writing his feature article, Zack stumbles into the centre of a web of murder and deceit. What seems like a tragic accidental hit-and-run may actually be a far darker crime. And Zack will find himself in the dark about who the good guys are, what the bad guys want, and what he's started to uncover . . .  Bad Guys is by Linwood Barclay.

The Furthest Station is by Ben Aaronovitch.  There's something going bump on the Metropolitan line and Sergeant Jaget Kumar knows exactly who to call. It's PC Peter Grant's speciality . . . Only it's more than going 'bump'. Traumatised travellers have been reporting strange encounters on their morning commute, with strangely dressed people trying to deliver an urgent message. Stranger still, despite calling the police themselves, within a few minutes the commuters have already forgotten the encounter - making the follow up interviews rather difficult. So with a little help from Abigail and Toby the ghost hunting dog, Peter and Jaget are heading out on a ghost hunting expedition.  Because finding the ghost and deciphering their urgent message might just be a matter of life and death.

October 2017

Eliza Altairsky-Lointaine is the toast of Moscow society, a beautiful actress in an infamous theatre troupe. Her love life is a colourful as the parts she plays. She is the estranged wife of a descendant of Genghis Khan. And her ex-husband has threatened to kill anyone who courts her. He appears to be making good on his promise. Fandorin is contacted by concerned friend - the widowed wife of Chekhov - who asks him to investigate an alarming incident involving Eliza. But when he watches Eliza on stage for the first time, he falls desperately in love . . . Can he solve the case - and win over Eliza - without attracting the attentions of the murderer he is trying to find?  All the World’s a Stage is by Boris Akunin.  He TV rights for the Fandorin series have been optioned by the BBC.

Journalist, family man, and paranoid writer Zack Walker visits his father's lakeside fishing camp. But the fresh air, childhood memories and peaceful contemplation are ruined when a body is found.  Locals say the mutilated corpse must have been the victim of a random bear attack. But Zack Walker, as always, fears the worst. When another body is discovered, it seems there is a more deadly predator on the prowl. A Lone Wolf killer who is hell-bent on laying siege to the idyllic town. The fuse is lit and time is running out. Zack must face down a madman - or find out first-hand what the grand finale is . . .  Bad Luck is by Linwood Barclay.

Harry Bosch works cold cases as a volunteer for the San Fernando police department when he's called out to a local drug store where a young pharmacist has been murdered. Bosch and the town's three-person detective squad sift through the clues, which lead into the dangerous, big business world of prescription drug abuse. Meanwhile, an old case from Bosch's LAPD days comes back to haunt him when a long-imprisoned killer claims Harry framed him and that there's new evidence which proves it. Bosch left the LAPD on bad terms, so his former colleagues aren't keen to protect his reputation. He must fend for himself in clearing his name and keeping a clever killer in prison.  The two unrelated cases wind across each other like strands of barbed wire, and Bosch learns that there are two kinds of truth: the kind that sets you free and the kind that leaves you buried in darkness.  Two Kinds of Truth is by Michael Connelly.

The Shadow Man is the debut novel by Margaret Kirk.  Two brutal killings rock Inverness, and bring ex-Met Detective Inspector Lukas Mahler the biggest challenge of his career...The body of the queen of daytime TV, Morven Murray is discovered by her sister, Anna, on the morning of her wedding day. But does Anna know more about the murder than she's letting on?Police informant Kevin Ramsay's murder looks like a gangland-style execution. But what could he have stumbled into that was dangerous enough to get him violently killed? Mahler has only a couple of weeks to solve both cases while dealing with his mother's fragile mental health. But caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse, is ex-Met DI Lukas Mahler hunting one killer, or two?

November 2017

Bad News is by Linwood Barclay.  Journalist Zack Walker has a dangerous habit of finding deadly stories. But this is one his good friend Trixie Snelling doesn't want told. It turns out Trixie has her fair share of skeletons in her closet and, as Zack discovers, a dead body in her basement.  With other journalists circling the story - and no sign of Trixie, who has gone missing - Zack could find himself implicated in a murder, unless he finds out the truth fast. The bad news is: it will cost him his job, and teach him that everything he knows about his friend, his town, and even his marriage, is a lie. The good news? It hasn't cost him his life . . . yet.

My Little Eye is by Stephanie Marland.  A young woman is found dead in her bedroom

surrounded by rose petals - the latest victim of 'The Lover'. Struggling under the weight of an internal investigation, DI Dominic Bell is no closer to discovering the identity of the killer and time is running out. AND MAKE THEM DIE... As the murders escalate, Clementine Starke joins an online true crime group determined to take justice in their own hands - to catch the killer before the police. Hiding a dark secret, she takes greater risks to find new evidence and infiltrate the group. As Starke and Bell get closer to cracking the case neither of them realise they're being watched. The killer is closer to them than they think, and he has his next victim - Clementine - firmly in his sights.

Portrait of a Murder: The Mill is by M B Shaw.  Meet portrait painter and amateur sleuth Iris Grey, who sees the truths of others while struggling to find her own way. Iris Grey arrives at The Mill in Hampshire, commissioned to paint a portrait of Dominic Wetherby, a celebrated author. She quickly finds herself drawn into a world of village gossip, romantic intrigue, buried secrets and a murder.

Jennifer Dorey thinks she is safe. Following a traumatic incident in London, Jennifer has returned to her childhood home in Guernsey, taking a job as a reporter at the local newspaper. After the discovery of a drowned woman on a beach, she uncovers a pattern of similar deaths that have taken place over the past fifty years. Together with DCI Michael Gilbert, an officer on the verge of retirement, they follow a dark trail of island myths and folklore to 'Fritz', the illegitimate son of a Nazi soldier. His work, painstakingly executed, has so far gone undetected. But with his identity about to be uncovered, the killer now has Jennifer in his sights. And home is the last place she should be.  The Devil’s Claw is by Lara Dearman.

December 2017 

The Boy is by Tami Hoag.  Mother, liar, murderer? In the sleepy Lousiana town of Bayou

Breaux, a mother runs to her neighbour - bloody and hysterical. The police arrive to find Genevieve Gauthier cradling her seven-year-old son in her arms as he bleeds to death. Detective Nick Fourcade finds no evidence of a break-in. His partner Detective Annie Broussard is troubled by parts of Genevieve's story that don't make sense. Twenty four hours later teenager Nora Florette is reported missing. Local parents fear a maniac is preying on their children, and demand answers from the police. Fourcade and Broussard discover something shocking about Genevieve's past. She is both victim and the accused; a grieving mother and a woman with a deadly secret. Could she have something to do with the disappearance of teenager Nora Florette?

January 2018

Naomi Cottle finds missing children. When the police have given up their search and an investigation stalls, families call her. She possesses a rare, intuitive sense, born out of her own experience, that allows her to succeed when others have failed. Young Madison Culver has been missing for three years. She vanished on a family trip to the mountainous forests of Oregon, where they'd gone to cut down a tree for Christmas. Soon after she disappeared, blizzards swept the region and the authorities presumed she died from exposure. But Naomi knows that Madison isn't dead. As she relentlessly pursues the truth behind Madison's disappearance, shards of a dark dream pierce defences that have protected her for so long. If she finds this child, will Naomi ultimately unlock the secrets of her own life?  The Child Finder is by Rene Denfeld.

Fear is by Dirk Kurbjuweit. You'd die for your family. But would you kill for them? Family is everything.  So what if yours was being terrorised by a neighbour - a man who doesn't listen to reason, whose actions become more erratic and sinister with each passing day? And those you thought would help - the police, your lawyer - can't help you.  You become afraid to leave your family at home alone. But there's nothing more you can do to protect them.  Is there?'

'Do you ever think there's maybe something that's gone wrong with the world?' A man is found dead in one of the city's luxury homes. Homicide detective Ross Carver arrives at the scene when six FBI agents burst in and forcibly remove him from the premises. Two days later...Carver wakes in his bed to find Mia a neighbour he's hardly ever spoken to, reading aloud to him. He has no recollection of the crime scene, no memory of how he got home, and no idea that two days have passed. Carver knows nothing about this woman but as he struggles to piece together what happened to him, he soon realises he's involved himself in a web of conspiracy that spans the nation. And Mia just might know more than she's letting on...  The Night Market is by Jonathan Moore.

The Guilty Wife is by Elle Croft.  WIFE. MISTRESS. MURDERER. If you were being framed for murder, how far would you go to clear your name? I'm not guilty of murder. Bethany Reston is happily married. But she's also having an affair with a famous client.  And no one can ever know. But that doesn't make me innocent.  When Bethany's lover is brutally murdered, she has to hide her grief from everyone. But someone knows her secret. And then one day the threats begin. With an ever-growing pile of evidence pointing to her as the murderer, the only way she can protect her secrets is to prove her innocence. And that means tracking down a killer.