Coming off their bestseller The Wife Between Us, Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen return with an easily digestible read that moves quickly even if some of the plot mechanics are a little outlandish.

The story follows a New York makeup artist, Jessica Farris, who becomes part of an experiment with a professor interested in morality. Having finagled her way into the study without an actual invitation, Jessica soon finds herself in a strange room, getting asked strange questions on a computer. And though she’s only in it for the generous financial compensation, she also feels she must be honest if she hopes to maintain a position in the study. As the plot unfolds and the reader learns more about Dr. Shields, the practitioner of this study, it emerges that (as one may have guessed) the doctor has ulterior motives and a personal history of “dealing” with women like Jessica.

Told using two points of view, An Anonymous Girl maintains a level of eeriness. Obviously, we get Jessica as the stand-in for the audience, but the creepier voice comes from Dr. Shields. As the narrative builds to a climax, the plot mechanics become creakier, and it’s harder to ignore them. But despite some of the limitations of the plot, the writers maintain the interest of the reader by juggling the compelling perspectives of the protagonist and antagonist. The result is a highly readable, if not plausible, book.

Eighteen contemporary writers, nearly all of whom work under the crime/mystery/thriller umbrella, recount their adventures in the visual media through essays or interviews. Among the major names represented are Michael Connelly, Lawrence Block, Max Allan Collins, T. Jefferson Parker, Jonathan Kellerman, and Lee Goldberg. All are worth reading, some lighthearted and humorous, others downright angry. Most memorable is Tess Gerritsen’s account of her battle over her 1999 novel Gravity and the Alfonso Cuarón-directed 2013 film of the same title. The two stories share several elements in common beyond their titles, notably the situation of a female astronaut (Sandra Bullock in the movie) trapped in an orbiting space station. Gerritsen had sold the rights to her novel, so the studio could do whatever they wanted with it, but she was contractually owed at least a credit that the film was based on her novel. The studio’s revisionist history claimed unconvincingly that the whole story was Cuarón’s inspiration. Gerritsen sued but soon learned the depth of pockets necessary to challenge the big money behind the studio lawyers. Though a bestselling novelist with a successful TV series based on her characters, she was treated like an off-the-wall crank. And that’s how Hollywood sometimes deals with writers.

Challenge the Impossible is the fifth collection of the late-Edward D. Hoch’s Dr. Sam Hawthorne stories. Included are the doctor’s final 15 cases, each crime as impossible as the last, and told in Hawthorne’s relaxed and amiable manner. The stories were originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine between March 2000 and May 2008, and are set in the fictional town of Northmont, Connecticut, during World War II. Dr. Hawthorne is transformed from a bachelor to a devoted husband to a father. And, as the tales unfold, the doctor and the townspeople become as important to the stories as are the puzzling crimes.

“The Problem of the Yellow Wallpaper” is a satisfying and surprising tribute to the Charlotte Perkins Gilman story, but it adds a locked-room disappearance—similar to the tale that inspired it—fraud, and a very cynical motive. “The Problem of the Summer Snowman” is tale of responsibility, revenge, and poetic justice. “The Problem of the Secret Patient,” the final Sam Hawthorne story, is a conspiracy-minded tale with a top-secret patient—Erwin Rommel after he was announced dead in Germany—with a bandage-covered face. All of the tales are as pleasant and pleasing as when they first appeared in EQMM, but reading them one after another is a new and remarkable experience.

Matt Coyle’s Wrong Light takes us into the world of late-night radio with Naomi Hendrix, a voluptuous-voiced San Diego radio host who encourages her listeners to open up about their lives while maintaining secrecy about her own. That is, until she begins to receive fan mail from a man calling himself Pluto, who is more creepy than admiring. The station bigwigs hire PI Rick Cahill, who recognizes deceit when he sees—or hears—it, and he knows something’s up with Naomi. She’s been shrugging off Pluto’s eerie letters, fearing that PI Cahill’s protection might wind up exposing her felonious past (she’d done time), thus ending her career as a late-night radio host on the verge of her program going national. When Cahill finally gets her to open up, she admits she was a onetime member of a Traveler family that preyed upon the gullible. Naomi’s particular gift was a supposed pipeline to the Other Side, access to which she charged her marks big money to talk to their dearly departed. Although the radio host’s demand of continued secrecy makes protecting her doubly difficult, Cahill is determined to shadow her, and does, until the Russian Mafia intervenes. It seems that the PI owes the mob a favor, and while taking care of that, Naomi disappears. Wrong Light is interesting until the wrong people start dying, and then it becomes a slog. It is further damaged by a badly-thought-out reveal, which not only leaves certain matters unresolved, but utilizes a plot device considered clichéd five decades ago. As much as I wanted to like this book, I came away disappointed.

Shifting gears from PIs and police detectives, we move to the other side of the spectrum, to catch up with Tom Wood’s unflappable assassin Victor, appearing in his ninth adventure, Kill For Me. Here, Victor is asked by Guatemalan drug cartel kingpin Heloise Salvatierra to eliminate her chief rival, Maria Salvatierra, her sister. Victor agrees, but finds himself sympathizing with his target as, during his painstaking preparations, he discovers just how untrustworthy his patron really is. How Victor navigates these treacherous waters is vastly entertaining, as Woods provides a front-row seat to a world where deceit is the norm, and sudden, violent death is a brutal fact of life.

"People ask me why there’s so much sex in my novels and I tell them I learned it all from [Judy Blume and] Forever. They laugh, but I’m not joking.... Along the way, I've read a few other books that have made an impression."

My parents were voracious readers, and our house was filled with books. And although those books were displayed on shelves, they weren’t just for show. My parents had read and reread them all, and it was a point of pride for them not to own an encyclopedia because their library was better.

Whenever I or my brother or sister would ask a question about something, whether for school or out of curiosity, my parents would take down the appropriate volume so we could discover for ourselves. I’d start out by reading whatever was relevant, and then get hooked and wind up reading the whole book.

And thus was born the love side of my love/hate relationship with the internet. I’ll look up a concept I’m unfamiliar with—recently, the Gish Gallop—and hours later, I’ve also learned about Fractal Wrongness, Presuppositionalism, and my favorite, Not Even Wrong. One person’s procrastination is another person’s research, or so I tell myself…

Our library was equal parts fiction and nonfiction, and my parents encouraged my brother and sister and me to read the novels on the shelves, too—The Three Musketeers was one of my mother’s favorites; Moby Dick was one of my father’s recommendations—but it was Watership Down, which I discovered when I was 11 or 12, that most awakened in me a latent love of storytelling. I remember lying in bed the whole weekend doing nothing but reading that book. And my parents didn’t once tell me to get out of the house and play.

I don’t mean to suggest it was all adult classics. I also loved children’s books, most of all those of Judy Bloom. People ask me why there’s so much sex in my novels and I tell them I learned it all from Forever. They laugh, but I’m not joking.

Along the way, I’ve read a few other books that have made an impression. Nineteen Eighty-Four is one of them, and I don’t think you can understand social media behavior without reference to concepts like the Two-Minute Hate, Emmanual Goldstein, and most of all Duckspeak (a few years ago I wrote an article for NPR about why Orwell’s message works so well packaged as a thriller). Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business is a short book that fundamentally changed my understanding of how media works. Eric Hoffer’s slim The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements is indispensable for understanding human nature (that was one of my father’s recommendations). I read Mary Renault’s The King Must Die, and in addition to being a wonderful story tapping into my love of Greek mythology, it was a fascinating counterpoint to some of the themes I encountered in Moby Dick.

Actually, that’s one of the things I love about novels—the way they can present different philosophies, sometimes in counterpoint. Is Ahab a hero or a villain for his determination to “strike through the mask” and take on God? Or are we “Better then not to question the Immortals, nor when they have spoken to grieve one’s heart in vain,” as Theseus advises at the end of The King Must Die? Philip K. Dick suggests in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep that our knowledge of our own mortality is what makes us human. Anne Rice approaches the question the opposite way, examining how much humanity remains in her immortal vampires. And…

Wait, you said about 400 words and I’m getting close to 600. Well, that’s just what books do! Which is of course why I love them.

Barry Eisler spent three years in a covert position with the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, then worked as a technology lawyer and startup executive in Silicon Valley and Japan, earning his black belt at the Kodokan Judo Institute along the way. Eisler’s award-winning thrillers have been included in numerous "Best Of" lists, have been translated into nearly 20 languages, and include the #1 bestsellers Livia Lone, The Night Trade, and The Killer Collective. Eisler lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and, when he's not writing novels, blogs about torture, civil liberties, and the rule of law. 

This "Writers on Reading" essay was originally published in "At the Scene" enews February 2019 as a first-look exclusive to our enewsletter subscribers. For more special content available first to our enewsletter subscribers, sign up here.

As readers, we have access to a staggering amount of content, if we’re willing to sully our eyes with the pulsating electronic words splattered across a smartphone’s screen. A condition I will endure in extreme circumstances. I’m cheap as the devil and when a physical copy of a book weighs against my daughter’s education or my mortgage, those ramen noodle-priced ebooks are tempting. But when there is a choice between a cheap and already obsolete ebook or a reasonably priced paper book, the tangible version always wins. So I’m happy when a publisher takes the financial risk and publishes a classic mystery novel, no matter the subgenre, in paper and ink. Amazingly there are still a bunch of those classics hitting print every year from publishers both large and small.

In a haphazard manner, and knowingly leaving many great books out, here are a few titles that reappeared on bookstore shelves this past year.

STARK HOUSE PRESS

Stark House Press has made its reputation by republishing vintage crime novels from the 1950s, '60s, and '70s. Some of the best writers from the paperback era have graced Stark House’s covers: Harry Whittington, David Goodis, Dan J. Marlowe, Lionel White, Day Keene, and the list goes on and on.

In 2018, Stark House published 18 reprints; each book is a double and every so often a triple, which means they include two or three novels. Its titles were impressive enough that I asked Greg Shepard, Stark House’s publisher, what I should read. His favorites “are probably” The Red Scarf / A Killer is Loose, by Gil Brewer ($19.95), Hostage for a Hood / The Merriweather File, by Lionel White ($19.95), and Portrait in Smoke / The Longest Second, by Bill S. Ballinger ($19.95).

I followed Mr. Shepard’s advice and read Gil Brewer’s The Red Scarf. Originally published by a small library imprint, Mystery House, in 1958, The Red Scarf has gained a cult-like status from readers and critics alike. The dark tale of St. Petersburg, Florida, motel owner Roy Nichols, The Red Scarf is an imagining of what a desperate man—heavily in debt and with a history of disappointing everyone who loves him, especially his wife—will do when confronted with a cash-filled briefcase. A sum that would solve his financial problems: payoff his motel and provide a comfortable future for his family. In the best traditions of noir, Nichols’ plan is destined to fail and his every move is choreographed to ensure that failure. Desperate and paranoid, The Red Scarf is as brilliant as it is horrifying. The pacing is relentless, the action hard and believable. The stark narrative and terse, just-right dialogue, hounds the reader to devour Roy Nichols’ tale in a single sitting.

The best part, as the last page of The Red Scarf disappears, the first page of its companion story, A Killer is Loose beckons.

A few other reprints of note published in 2018 by Stark House include, Widow’s Mite / Who’s Afraid, by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding ($19.95), Lady of a Thousand Sorrows / Confessions of Westchester County, by Barry N. Malzberg ($17.95), The Baby Doll Murders / Killer Take All! / Frenzy, James O. Causey ($19.95), and Nightfall / Cassidy’s Girl / Night Squad, by David Goodis ($21.95).

BRASH BOOKS

Brash Books has been quietly publishing original and reprinted crime novels over the past few years, and doing a very good job of it. In 2018, Brash began reprinting Ralph Dennis’ cult classic Hardman private eye novels. The Hardman books were published by Popular Library as paperback originals in the 1970s. The novels, all 12, were packaged as a men’s adventure series with poor and misleading cover art—explosions, karate fights, car chases—and each book was numbered: Hardman #1, #2, #3, etc. But the books were much better than their packaging indicated and have more in common with Robert B. Parker’s Spenser novels than with any straight men’s adventure series. Jim Hardman, an unlicensed PI and disgraced former Atlanta cop, has a hard-edged working class vibe, and Dennis’s portrayal of Atlanta, especially its race and gender relations, are, at times uncomfortable to a modern reader, but remain an important reminder of what things were like in the United States generally, and Atlanta particularly, during the 1970s. As Joe Lansdale writes in his Introduction to the series, “Dennis may not have made literature of Hardman, but he damn sure touched on it more than a time or two.”

In Atlanta Deathwatch ($16.99), the first entry in the series, Jim Hardman is hired by a wealthy man to follow his daughter, Emily Campbell. Hardman is ambushed by two hoods and warned off the girl with a thumping hard enough to make an impression and he quickly drops the the job. But when Emily is murdered, her boyfriend, a top level black mobster known as The Man, hires Hardman to find the killer. The trail leads to unexpected places; from Atlanta’s criminal underbelly to its leading citizens. There is everything one expects from a private eye novel: exceptional characterization, strong and vigorous prose, and a glimpse into a place and time that has long since disappeared. It also introduces Hardman’s partner, Hump Evans, a former professional football player and his series long and often complex relationship with his girlfriend, Marcy.

Hardman returns in The Charleston Knife is Back in Town (Brash Books, $16.99), with an elderly woman for a client and his best friend and partner, Hump Evans, as a victim. When Hump is invited to a high-flying party in one of Atlanta’s best neighborhoods he, and every other guest, is robbed at gunpoint. Unfortunately for the robbers, the guest list is a who’s-who of big-time gamblers and gangsters. The take is large enough, estimated at $200,000, that the local mafia wants to send a message to any other would-be robbers as much as it wants the money back. An out-of-town psycho, a short blond man who goes by the name The Charleston Knife, is brought to Atlanta to find and then messily and very publicly kill the robbers. Hardman’s client believes her grandson is involved with the robbery gang and she wants him back home and unharmed. The action is sharp, even more so than Atlanta Deathwatch, the dialogue is crisp and true to the ear, and the characterization, especially the relationship between Hardman and Hump, is expanded and perfected.

The first four Hardman novels were published during 2018, including the first two reviewed above and The Golden Girl and All ($16.99), and Pimp for the Dead ($16.99). When I asked Lee Goldberg, one of Brash Books’ publishers, if he had a favorite Hardman entry, he reluctantly pointed to The Golden Girl and All, and then hedged by saying, “It’s the series as a whole—Ralph’s great voice, the sense of place, the wonderful characters of Hardman and Hump, and Hardman’s relationship to Marcy—that really made an impact on me rather than an individual book.”

BLACK GAT BOOKS

Black Gat Books, an imprint of Stark House Press, publishes four mass market paperback reprints of vintage crime novels each year. In 2018, Black Gat published, The Men from the Boys, by Ed Lacy ($9.99) Frenzy of Evil, by Henry Kane ($9.99), You’ll Get Yours, by William Ard ($9.99), and End of the Line, by Bert and Delores Hitchens ($9.99).

I took a chance on Henry Kane’s 1962 novel, Frenzy of Evil, and discovered a clever and bleak crime story. Jonathan Joseph Carson—Jonathon Joe to his friends—is a successful trial lawyer with a penchant for drink and women. At the tender age of 62, Jonathon Joe wed the very beautiful and very young Dolores Zamora. It's a marriage destined to reveal Jonathon Joe’s conniving and violent madness. When Dolores admits to a lover, Jonathon Joe promises, “Whoever he is, wherever he is, I will find him and I will kill him…” A promise Jonathon Joe intends to keep. But the wealthy crowd the Carsons socialize with have more than a few secrets and it doesn’t take much for everything to get knotted and torn.

Henry Kane is best remembered for his private eye Peter Chambers, but Frenzy of Evil, a standalone thriller, has a surprising intensity, built from what at first glance appears to be a rambling tale about wealth and privilege, that swirls into shimmering focus with an ending as perfect as any ending ever can be. A beautiful, raw, and suspenseful tale that every crime reader should enjoy.

HARD CASE CRIME

Hard Case Crime’s output has decreased over the years, but the quality of the titles it publishes is as high as ever. In 2018 HCC published four sturdy and time-tested reprints. Donald E. Westlake’s long out-of-print comedic crime story, Help I Am Being Held Prisoner ($9.95), was originally published in 1974. Its humor and suspense have withstood time’s corrosive powers, and it is as good today as it was in the way back.

Understudy for Death ($9.95) is a Florida noir by the master of the tradition, Charles Willeford. Originally published in 1961, it is as bleak as one would expect. Understudy is a must for Willeford’s fans, but readers new to his bleak Florida style may want to start elsewhere. Erle Stanley Gardner’s Bertha Cool and Donald Lam mystery, The Count of 9 ($9.95), originally published in 1959, is an entertaining romp with the two private eyes guarding a treasure, but it’s the distrust whirling around the characters, including trust issues between Cool and Lam, that make the story work. So Many Doors, by Oakley Hall, is a gem about a femme fatale and the distraction and destruction she causes wherever there are men. If you read only one HCC book from 2018, So Many Doors should be it.

POISONED PEN PRESS

For those who enjoy their crime stories more traditional, Poisoned Pen Press continued its British Library Crime Classics series during 2018 with the publication of J. Jefferson Farjeon’s 1939 novel, Seven Dead ($12.95). When a pickpocket, Ted Lytle, diversifies into burglary he discovers a drawing room filled with the dead, five men and one woman. There is little evidence of the culprit, or even the cause of death. It takes Detective Inspector Kendall, in a straight manner, and yachtsman Thomas Hazelton, with a more creative approach to the mystery, to solve the case. Seven Dead’s hook is as good, and gruesome, as any traditional mystery I’ve read.

Richard Hull’s 1934 novel, The Murder of My Aunt ($12.95), is a marvelously comedic tale, of that most British kind of humor that is both black and wry, about an incompetent killer and his clever would-be victim, Aunt Mildred. The ending is never in doubt, but the journey from one attempt to the next is a breezy and fun escapade. Also published as part of the British Library Crime Classics series in 2018 are Weekend at Thrackley by Alan Melville ($12.95), Ellen Wilkinson’s The Division Bell Mystery ($12.95), The Arsenal Stadium Mystery by Leonard Gribble ($12.95), and many other excellent titles.

BEN BOULDEN lives in a suburb of Salt Lake City, in the shadows of the Wasatch Mountains. He is married with a daughter, a dog, a one-eyed cat, and a fish named Drink-Drink. He is the author of Blaze! Red Rock Rampage and the forthcoming Blaze! Spanish Gold. He writes the column “Short & Sweet: Short Stories Considered” for Mystery Scene Magazine and has written more than 300 reviews, articles, and essays. He blogs haphazardly at Gravetapping.

 Melanie Goldings’ first book, Little Darlings, is a psychological thriller about Lauren Tranter, the mother of new born twins, who is experiencing postpartum depression and psychotic breaks—or are they? The reader has to take what comes through the new mother’s point of view and try and figure out what’s happening. I found it impossible to stop reading Little Darlings once I picked it up.

Robin Agnew for Mystery Scene: Mysteries, and psychological suspense in particular, have always explored the trope of the unreliable narrator. Some succeed far more than others, but one reason your book is so good is that Lauren's psychological exhaustion is a relatable one that so many people have experienced: being a new parent. Can you talk about how you came up with your “hook”?

Melanie Golding: Lauren’s experiences are drawn from conversations I had over the years with women who had given birth, and the things that happen very commonly to women during birth and in the days following. What struck me about it, was that while I was pregnant with my first baby, I had no idea of the kinds of things that went on, only a vague notion that there might be an episiotomy, and that there would be something like pain, but that when it was over, I would forget all about it.

After I gave birth I felt cheated and tricked by everyone who had pretended it wouldn’t be all that bad, and the feeling grew as other women shared their stories with me. I felt foolish for not being wise to this, and wondered where all the ‘bad’ birth stories were in fiction. I also realized that in terms of characterization, it was key that Lauren should have this, a fairly standard birth experience, so that people can see how traumatic birth can be, for mental health as well as physical health, even if, medically, nothing went 'wrong.'

Another key, relatable aspect is the fear that she feels, that she won’t be good enough, or that she will fail in some way. Many people feel this, after having a baby, and so many women are depressed at this time but never diagnosed or helped. When the changeling tale came into my hands, everything seemed to click into place for the story. What could be more frightening than having your babies switched, and then knowing that no one believes you?

One of my favorite mysteries of all time is Celia Fremlin’s The Hours Before Dawn (1958), which I read years ago when I had a toddler and an infant. I thought it perfectly captured the kind of crazy thinking that comes when you’re sleep deprived. The attitudes Lauren encounters—that she’s kind of nuts and must be appeased—could have been lifted straight from Fremlin’s long-ago novel. Can you talk about that a bit? Do you think attitudes toward new mothers are kind of stuck in the past?

I love that book! The main character is so relatable. Even though it was written in the 1950s you can see that some things are exactly the same. The protagonist has internalized her mother-wife role in the same way that many women still do, despite the fact we are supposedly living in a post-feminist world. Also you can see many of her husband’s flaws in (some!) modern men to this day, unfortunately, even though he’s a good guy.

What has changed quite a lot is the attitude toward babies and children: these days they are protected more, and adults are more aware of how precious the early years are in terms of development. In Fremlin’s book, the main character is forever leaving the baby outside for a few hours to ‘air’ him. That sort of thing wouldn’t happen now.

Were you interested in toying with the perceptions of the reader? As a reader you have to think about the information you’re taking in and try to parse it. That’s always the case, to a point, but it’s an interesting way to approach your main character. 

I’m really interested in perception, and how events can be perceived in totally different ways depending on your perspective. I love conspiracy theories, and the idea that there are thousands of people out there who believe folk legends are real. Ghost stories, also, are fascinating, because although science does not accept in general the prospect of an afterlife, there are still huge gaps, places in the human psyche and in the world we live, where there is no knowledge or explanation for phenomena. I wanted to create a novel that could be read in different ways, depending on the reader’s outlook, and their openness to non-concrete solutions. Also, I really wanted to create something that people could disagree about, and then have a really good discussion.

I also love the folklore element. I’ve always thought that kind of interweaving adds so much to the richness and texture of a narrative. Where did the idea to use a changeling story come from?

I first had an idea for a short story with a contemporary setting based on the changeling tale, mainly because it frightened me. I was writing it for a local event that was having an Eerie Evening. The story kind of chose me, I think, because it got longer and longer (way past the event’s word count) but I couldn’t stop writing it. Then I started to research the folktale and discovered that it had been frightening people across cultures in many different versions for centuries. That made me examine the origins of the tale and I decided it was a story that either explained postpartum psychosis in a time before people knew what that was, OR it was a story about evil beings that desire to steal children. I really wanted it to be both.

This is your first book, but it does not seem like a freshman effort. Do you have a bunch of drafts stuck in a drawer somewhere?

Of course! I have a couple of malformed tomes on a hard drive, not quite forgotten, but definitely never to see the light of day. These are the practice novels; the pancakes that the chef never serves, but eats before anyone sees.

Have you always wanted to write a mystery novel? Are you a big fan of the genre?

I was always keen to write a mystery novel. As a reader I started with Enid Blyton as a young child and moved on to Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson, then to Stephen King and James Herbert. I devour books by Lawrence Block. I admire anyone who can pull off a big twist, such as the one in We Need to Talk About Kevin, as I haven’t managed to write one yet and I’m worried I can’t do it. Having said that I am planning a big twist novel to prove myself wrong.

What was your path to publication like? Long, short, easy, difficult?

Like many writers I have always written for myself, but for a long time I attempted to be successful as a composer-lyricist rather than a fiction writer. I found the need to write novels came upon me in my late twenties. At the same time, I lost the desire to perform my own music in any serious way. I wrote and wrote until I had a finished novel that I could bear to let others read. After it was rejected by every agent and publisher I sent it to, I spoke to a friend who had done a masters in creative writing and I suddenly knew that was what I should do. Little Darlings was begun on the first day of the course, in September 2015, and it sold in November 2017.

What writers have been influential for you?

I read and reread everything by Maggie O’Farrell, Kate Atkinson, and Iain Banks, but all writers are influential. You can learn different things from Patricia Highsmith than you can from Alexander McCall Smith, just as what you learn from Stephen King is different to what you learn from Anne Tyler. But all the lessons are invaluable.

I’ve always read everything I could get my hands on; each book will have contributed in some way to the writer I am now, but books I remember as being extremely influential include: Beloved, by Toni Morrison; Sexing the Cherry, by Jeanette Winterson; The Wasp Factory, by Iain Banks; and One Good Turn, by Kate Atkinson.

Finally, what’s next? Are you working on your next book?

I am working on another thriller featuring DS Joanna Harper and inspired by a different folktale. I’m really interested in the way these stories still intrigue us, the agelessness of them. I like to try to imagine how and for what purpose the tales first appeared, and build a story around that.

Melanie Golding is a UK based author with a wide range of interests, including music and folklore. In 2016, she completed the MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, graduating with distinction. Her debut novel is Little Darlings (Crooked Lane Books, 2019).