Sophie Hannah: New Mistress of Suspense

Interviewed by Sandra Parshall


Sophie Hannah does suspense the way Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine does it: by using the mundane routines of everyday life to construct a nightmarish trap for her vulnerable characters.

Sophie is a bestselling crime fiction writer in Britain and is rapidly winning readers all over the world with her beautifully written and cleverly plotted psychological thrillers. Little Face, Hurting Distance and The Wrong Mother (titled The Point of Rescue in Britain) have been published in the U.S., and The Dead Lie Down (titled The Other Half Lives in Britain) is slated for American publication.

Before she turned to crime fiction, Sophie was already the celebrated author of three mainstream novels, a children’s book, and several poetry collections. Her poetry is studied at schools across the UK. From 1997 to 1999 she was Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge, and between 1999 and 2001 she was a fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford. She lives in West Yorkshire with her husband and two children.

Sophie will appear at Bouchercon in Indianapolis this month and afterward will speak and sign at several bookstores before returning home.

Q. You wrote several non-genre novels before turning to suspense. What lured you over to the dark side?

A. I've always been obsessed with mystery fiction, since I was a kid. My parents bought me one of Enid Blyton's Secret Seven mysteries when I was
about five or six, and I remember reading it and thinking, “Stories with mysteries in them are so much better than those without -- why don't all books have mysteries in them?” I've never really changed my mind on that point. I read all of Enid Blyton, then discovered Agatha Christie and read all her books, then Ruth Rendell... I'm a mystery addict, really! I think it's because I'm quite nosy. In real life, I'm always desperate to know something -- what someone's thinking, what's going on behind the scenes in people's lives that they don't talk about -- and the great thing about suspense fiction is that you know your nosiness is going to be satisfied at the end of the book.

Q. Why did you choose to write suspense rather than traditional whodunnits told primarily from the sleuth’s or police detective’s POV? What is it about the suspense form that you find rewarding as a writer?

A. Well, each of my books combines two narrative perspectives. I always have a female protagonist in some kind of nightmarish situation, and half of each book is narrated in the first person by the heroine of that particular book. But then the other half is in the third person from the main detectives' points of view. I decided, when I set out to write my first crime novel, that I would do it this way and it worked so well for me that I've stuck to it. It enables me to look at whatever's going on from two very distinct angles and I think it helps to portray the events of each novel “in the round”, as it were. For the heroine, whatever's going on is liable to ruin her life (if not end it!) unless she can sort it out. For the police, it's their job to solve the mystery and sort out whatever crime might have been committed, so not as much is at stake for them, or rather a lot might be at stake but its usually professional stuff -- their reputation, their career prospects. I like, in my novels, to show what the same crime means to different people.

So, that's my literary explanation, but from a personal point of view -- bearing in mind that I write the books I'd love to read but that don't exist yet -- my two favourite sub-genres within the crime genre are the first-person-narrated woman-in-peril psychological thriller and the third-person-narrated police procedural, so I thought: “Why not have the best of both worlds and combine the two?”

Q. You feature the same police detectives from book to book. Do you plan to develop them more fully and focus on them more in future books?

A. Yes, I do plan to develop my cop protagonists further and keep them in my novels for the foreseeable future. As a reader of series detective novels, I always look forward to the new Inspector Wexford, or the new Inspector Morse, and I think there can be real pleasure gained from having a recurring detective character or characters -- it's like meeting an old friend again after not seeing them for a while! Also, now I'm very attached to my police characters. I'd really miss them, I think, if I stopped putting them in my books. My readers also are attached to them, and regularly email me to check I'm planning to continue their story.

Q. In The Wrong Mother, your portrayal of mothers and their feelings toward their children is brutally honest. How have your female readers reacted? Do they identify with characters who love their kids but sometimes feel burdened by them, or do they consider your fictional mothers abnormal?

A. The funny thing is that I thought some people might disapprove of the negative attitudes towards motherhood in the book, but I've had an overwhelmingly positive reaction -- loads of emails from women saying, “I thought I was the only one who'd ever felt that way, and I'm so pleased you had the courage to write a no-holds-barred account of it.” Even my friends who have loved being full-time mums and are, in my view, perfect mothers said that they loved reading about nasty, selfish mothers resenting their children. I think, even if you are someone who behaves well, it's always fun to read about someone else behaving really badly!

And the nasty-mother scenes were very cathartic to write, I must say! I found it very hard when my kids were little, and I always struggled to do my best for them, and wouldn't have wanted to do otherwise, but I thoroughly enjoyed inventing a character who shamelessly prioritizes herself over her daughter every time and wishes she'd never bothered having a child. In my darkest moments, I did have some thoughts along those lines. Luckily, extensive child-care provision from nannies, nurseries and babysitters enabled me to get through those difficult early years. Otherwise, I might well have become as deranged as the worst mothers in my novel!

Q. Two recurring themes in your books are mother/child relationships and false identities. What draws you to these subjects?

A. I don't have mother-child relationships in all my books. They're prominent in both Little Face and The Wrong Mother, but I've written two other suspense novels that are child-free. I need regular breaks from the company of children, in writing as in life! But, yes, I suppose mother-child relationships and, more generally, family relationships are a particular interest of mine. There's so much drama in families, so many secrets and undercurrents and hidden resentments. I find them fascinating.

I am also fascinated by the idea of people turning out to be not who they're supposed to be -- I think because, to me, the scariest thing I can imagine would be finding out that things are not at all how they seem. If the version of your life that you believe in one hundred per cent turns out to be false, how terrifying is that?

I'm also fascinated by the apparently impossible in a mystery plot -- yet it must be possible because it's happened. Like that moment in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, when one character me mentions to another that Norman Bates lives with his mother and the other character says, “But his mother's dead. If she's living in that house, who is it that's been buried in such-and-such cemetery for twenty-five years?” There's a real thrill in realizing that the seemingly impossible is actually happening. Also, mysteries that seem impossible are harder to solve, and that's an added interest of mine as a writer -- I like the challenge of finding the perfect solution to an apparently impossible mystery!

Q. In a review of Hurting Distance in the Independent, the reviewer wrote, “This is a far better-written book than any genre label might suggest.” American crime fiction writers are accustomed to that kind of snobbery, but does it surprise you? Do you think mystery and suspense novelists (who, in my own opinion, are producing some of the best writing being published these days) are less respected than they should be?

A. Yes, there's that same snobbery about crime fiction in the UK. I just totally ignore it. Having read A Dark-adapted Eye by Barbara Vine, and Half-broken Things by Morag Joss, and In the Woods by Tana French, and countless other brilliant crime novels, I am in no doubt that mystery and suspense fiction can be every bit as worthwhile, memorable, deep and full of literary merit as literary fiction. My theory about the snobs (some of whom even love reading mystery fiction themselves, but still dismiss it as disposable) is that they're insecure about their own cleverness. They want to prove their intellectual and literary credentials, and use their choice of reading matter as a way of doing this. Whereas I know I'm clever and don't feel the need to prove it, so I allow myself to read and write the most enjoyable kind of fiction there is: mystery fiction.

Q. How has your life changed since you became a bestselling writer? What is the best aspect of this kind of success, and what are the drawbacks?

A. The best thing about being a bestselling writer is that so many readers write to me to say they love my books, and that's fantastic. It really boosts my confidence, and helps me to trust my creative instincts, because I can think to myself, “I must be doing something right, or all those people wouldn't write me those nice letters.” So now when I have a new idea that seems a bit scary and risky, I tell myself, “You've got to do it, however scary it seems -- if you hadn't taken those risks before, you wouldn't have written all those other books that readers loved enough to make the effort of writing to you.”

Also, I now have much more money than I had before, which is great. People say that money doesn't buy happiness, but it certainly buys you a lot more freedom, and you can't be properly happy if you aren't free. The drawback of my situation is that with every book I become more worried about letting readers down -- is this book as good as the last? You've got more to live up to, and you have a sense of constantly competing against yourself, which can be exhausting.

Q. How do you manage to write while keeping up a busy promotion schedule and managing a household with children? What is your writing routine like?

A. When I'm working on a first draft, I write every weekday, between about 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. When I'm not working on a novel, I'm touring, or sorting out my house/children. The answer is that I manage by running myself into the ground and being exhausted all the time. I ought to take better care of myself, but I'm too busy to work out how to do that (like the heroine of The Wrong Mother!)

Q. I hope you’ll enjoy this year’s Bouchercon in Indianapolis and your bookstore appearances in the US afterward. Have you been to the US before to promote your books?

A. I was in the US last year promoting Little Face. So this is my second US tour.

In the third week of October, Sophie will appear at The Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale, AZ, Houston's Murder by the Book, and Oakland's A Great Good Place for Books. Check the stores’ web sites for dates and times. Visit Sophie’s web site at www.sophiehannah.com for more information about her and her books.

Interview with Lisa Unger

Interviewed by Sandra Parshall


My guest today published four novels in the Lydia Strong series under the name Lisa Miscione before she switched to her married name, Lisa Unger, for publication of the bestselling suspense novels Beautiful Lies and A Sliver of Truth. Her new book, Black Out, will be released May 27 and is already garnering rave reviews and has been named a Booksense Notable Book for June. Lisa was born in Connecticut, but her family moved a lot – as far as Holland and England – during her childhood before settling in New Jersey. Before becoming a full-time writer, she worked as a publicist for a major publisher. She lives in Florida with her husband and young child.


Q. Would you tell us about your upcoming book, Black Out?

A. Black Out is about a woman name Annie Fowler, whose perfect life in a wealthy Florida beach community is little more than a façade.

She’s literally and figuratively left a horrible past behind -- having fled her true identity and forgotten most of the trauma of her childhood and adolescence. But a series of terrifying events start triggering unwanted memories. And she realizes that she has to face the past she’d rather forget to claim her future -- and save her daughter.

Black Out was my most intense writing experience, and Annie is my darkest, most complicated heroine. I see the resolution of a lot of themes that started in my Lydia Strong books and continued through to Ridley Jones -- the lost girl, fractured identity, how we must claim ourselves rather than wait to be rescued. I felt a terrible urgency to resolve these themes in Black Out.

Q. Why did you decide to use the name Unger after writing four Lydia Strong novels as Lisa Miscione?

A. There are a lot of reasons. First, Beautiful Lies represented such a departure, such an evolution in my writing that it didn’t seem like a Lisa Miscione book at all. I was moving on from the Lydia Strong series and from St. Martin’s Minotaur to be published at Shaye Areheart Books/ Crown. Unger is my married name. So it seemed like a normal and even necessary step. So, I just sent an email to the five people who’d read my Lydia Strong books and let them know to look for Lisa Unger in the future. The transition was fairly smooth, thanks to mostly supportive mystery independent stores who did a lot of handselling and the chains that have supported the Lisa Unger books in a big way.

Q. I see Beautiful Lies and A Sliver of Truth as a single story told in two parts, and it’s hard to imagine that you didn’t originally intend to write a second book about Ridley. At what point did you realize there would be a second book?

A. I didn’t know there was a second book until after Beautiful Lies was done and I’d decided that there wouldn’t be a series. I didn’t want to write another Ridley. I knew the ending wasn’t easy. I knew that a lot of things went unanswered. And I knew that in BL Jake had lied to Ridley, and fooled her completely. But that’s life, right? There’s so much that never gets resolved, people go unpunished, some answers are never found. But I thought, Ridley’s okay. She’s on her own. After a while, though, all those unresolved points kept nagging, and I kept hearing Ridley’s voice. So I wrote Sliver of Truth. Now, of course, there are a lot of unresolved issues at the end of that book, too.
So …

Q. Have you decided yet whether you’ll write a third Ridley book? Do you think it would be possible to make a third story as deeply personal for Ridley as the first two are?

A. I do still think about Ridley a lot. I think about Max and Ace, even Jake, still. I also wonder about Grace from time to time. So, never say never. I feel connected to Ridley, so I know if I choose to write about her again, it will be a deeply personal story, about the next level of her journey. I wouldn’t write it by design, under some outside influence to write more about her. All my novels well up from within, each of them had to be written for reasons largely unknown to me at the time. This is especially true with the Lisa Unger books. I feel like I really found my voice with Beautiful Lies. I started writing Angel Fire when I was 19 years old. Lydia was a product of a very young woman’s imagination, of very young issues working in my subconscious. As much as Beautiful Lies and Sliver of Truth are Ridley’s coming of age story, they’re mine, as well. So yes, I’m confident that any evolution of Ridley’s story, should it demand to be written, would be deeply personal for her, and for me.

Q. To me, the most striking quality of your writing is its sheer emotional intensity. Do you have to work at heightening the emotion during the revision process, or does it all come tumbling out of you as you write the first draft?

A. I am a very emotional person, so if anything, I think … god, is this too over-wrought? I don’t know if one can fake -- or heighten, as you say -- emotional intensity. If it is possible, I don’t know how.

Q. How much planning or outlining, if any, do you do before you begin writing? What is the first day of working on a new book like for you? Do you choose a day to begin, or wait until you reach a point where you feel compelled to sit down and get started?

A. When I sit down to write, I have no idea what’s going to happen. I might hear a voice in my head, a phrase, see a news story, a song lyric, an image and I’m off. I don’t know how things are going to end, who is going to turn up on the page. For example, in Black Out, Dax -- one of my favorite characters from the Lydia Strong books -- turned up. How did he get into this new universe? No idea.

My golden writing hours are from 5 AM to noon. That’s generally when I work. Of course, I have a toddler now, so she takes precedence over almost everything, including my writing. So I have to be a bit more flexible. I write again the way I did when I had a full time job -- I make the time, squeeze it in between the other demands on me. Luckily, it’s really harder for me not to write than to find the time, so somehow it all seems to work out.

As for choosing the day or not, it’s kind of some combination between discipline and inspiration. You can’t always make the magic come, but you have to be open and available to it. If you are disciplined about making time to work, then the magic finds you. But, usually, the idea for a new book comes like a lightning bolt. There’s no seeking it and no avoiding it.

Q. Do you revise as you go, or concentrate on getting the whole story down before you rewrite?

A. I tend to do a bit of rewriting and revision as I go along. Going back and reworking this paragraph or that scene helps settle me into the manuscript for the day and often leads to a propulsion forward. I don’t spend too much time on revision during the first draft, though; forward momentum is very important.

Q. How much time do you devote to research, and how do you go about it? For example, when you wrote Twice, how did you learn about the lives of the homeless who live in tunnels beneath Manhattan?

A. I spend quite a bit of time on research. Mainly because I know next to nothing and have to learn about everything! I love the Internet for its immediacy and wealth of information. But there’s nothing like anecdotal research, talking to people, hearing their stories. I have a couple of people who I really rely on for the nuts and bolts of crime and police work. And for Black Out, I conducted a number of interviews -- a clinical psychiatrist, the head honchos at a privatized military company. I also read a lot of non-fiction, and this is in a way a kind of research just because I’m a knowledge and experience junkie, just taking it all in, never knowing what I’ll use later.

With Twice, I’d been fascinated for a long time about the people living in the tunnels beneath Manhattan. A book by Jennifer Toth called The Mole People had really captured my imagination when I was in college. And then I was in a seven-year relationship with a New York City police officer (a whole other kind of research, not for the faint-hearted). And he confirmed that there was an indeed a whole community of homeless living beneath the streets of New York, though no one wanted to admit that. So a lot of what I learned came long before I wrote the book. There have also been a number of great documentary films made on this topic, which served as research and inspiration. I also did a lot of investigating about the system of tunnels beneath the city, unmapped and uncharted, miles and miles of old tracks and abandoned stations. That just always impressed me as enormously cool. For a dark imagination like mine, it’s heaven on earth.

Q. Why do you prefer thrillers to straight mystery? What does the experience of writing a thriller offer you as a writer?

A. Strangely enough, I’m not sure I understand the difference. I get that it’s a pacing and intensity thing.

But, in my heart, I feel as though these are labels created by publishing companies and booksellers to categorize books for sale. I just write what I write, and some people think I’m a thriller writer, others think I’m a mystery writer. I read a review of Beautiful Lies that called it chick-lit. I’ll leave it to others to decide what I am. I’m a writer who tends toward crime and the dark side of things … that’s where my imagination takes me. What other people call me is up to them, I suppose.

Q. Thrillers used to be the domain of male writers. Do you think women have achieved equal status with readers -- or have you encountered male readers who still won’t touch a thriller written by a woman?

A. Hmm … good question. I do have quite a few male readers and am amazed to get mail from them, telling me how much they enjoyed the books. I guess I don’t really expect to have male readers in the first place. So when they take the time to write, I’m really shocked. I had one bookseller in California tell me that the Lydia Strong books were hard-boiled and that male readers in his store who don’t read women, read me. I did take that as a compliment -- sort of.

I do think there’s a bit of a boys club in the genre -- and not just among readers. Maybe it is simply because so many writers and readers of the thriller/mystery genre were forged by noir, which was very much so dominated by men. I definitely feel that a certain type of reader -- uncomfortable with strong female characters, emotional content, sex as told from the feminine perspective - might still shy away from books written by women. But they’re missing out. We have a lot to offer the genre, a new perspective, a fresh voice. Some of the best people writing are writing crime fiction, and quite of few of those writers are women.

Q. What kind of work did you do in publishing? Were you writing throughout that time? When did you decide to go for a full-time career as a novelist?

A. I was a publicist, booking author tours, setting up interviews, appearances, parties, etc. It was a very cool job and I learned everything I ever wanted to know about the industry.

But I have always been a writer and went into publishing as a way to get closer to my dreams without actually committing to it. But, of course, my job got bigger and bigger and I wrote less and less. Finally I had an epiphany -- I realized that I had stopped writing, had never been further away from my dreams and if I didn’t start writing again, I’d have to look back and myself in five years, ten years and say, “You know what? You never even tried to do this.” I couldn’t live with that, so I started writing again, every day, staying up late, getting up early, staying in on weekends, writing at lunch. From that point it took me another year to finish Angel Fire. I started it when I was 19 and finished it when I was 29. Ten years and it’s not a very long book. It’s a little embarrassing, actually.

Q. Do you think finding an agent and selling your first novel was made easier by your experience in publishing?

A. It was easier and harder at the same time. It was easier to find an agent because an editor friend liked the book -- but not enough to buy it. She did, however, suggest a few agents who might like it enough to work on it with me. One of those agents, Elaine Markson, signed me on and helped me rework the manuscript into something publishable.

I may not have had that opportunity if I hadn’t worked in the industry. On the other hand, anyone who wants to slave away in publishing for no money for ten years as a way to get her foot in the door, be my guest. We all pay our dues, one way or another, and no one does anybody any favors in this or any money-making industry.

None of the editors I had known, and none of the publishing companies where I’d worked made offers on my manuscript. They all, in fact, turned it down. When Angel Fire went to St. Martin’s, it was to an editor I’d never met.

I think people don’t want you to change. They see you one way, in my case as a book publicist, and they don’t want to see you any other way. So I think that made it harder to sell my first book.

Q. Do you have a pet peeve about the publishing business?

A. I actually love the business. I love everything about it. I think it’s a wonderfully romantic way to make a living -- as a writer, or an editor or even a publicist. Which is not to say that it isn’t as brutal as any other industry -- dreams are made and crushed everyday; talent doesn’t necessarily mean success; numbers matter more than high achievement in craft. The highs are dizzying; the lows are abysmal.

Success is not guaranteed, no matter how auspicious your beginning -- in fact it’s harder to succeed as a published writer than it is to get published in the first place. But I have never wanted to do anything else but write, so I’m profoundly grateful to make a living in this business.

Q. What advice do you have for aspiring writers?

A. Write every day. Dig deeper every day. Be true to yourself. Think of publishing as an incidental element to the act of striving to be the best writer you can be, secondary to getting better every day for your experiences and dedication to the craft.

Q. Will you be at any mystery or thriller conferences this year where fans can meet you?

A. I’m planning to make it to Bouchercon this year, schedule permitting. Hope to see you all there!

Visit Lisa’s web sites at www.lisaunger.com and www.lisamiscione.com