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Hello Crime Clubbers Welcome to the second instalment of our Crime Club special features, where we share insights, secrets and tips for writing (and reading) the very best in crime fiction. Direct from our writing desks to your inbox, these exposés will entertain, intrigue and unsettle even the most hardened of fans. We hope you enjoy our new series and keep the conversation going over on Twitter or Instagram.  In this exclusive from Rachel Abbott, the bestselling author of the DCI Tom Douglas thrillers, the author dissects the difference between motive and motivation in the creation of a truly believable, and chilling, murderer...     HOW TO MAKE A MURDERER 'Many years ago I was fortunate enough to work on an interactive CD-ROM version of the board game Cluedo, which incorporated video extracts as well as the usual 3D graphics. Disc space was limited, so each video segment had to appear in more than one story, irrespective of the killer, the location, and the weapon. In true Agatha Christie style, everyone appeared to have a motive.  One day during filming I was driving the actor John Standing (who played Colonel Mustard) to the railway station, and he asked me if he was the murderer or not. I told him that in some iterations he would be. In others, he wouldn’t. He looked at me with horror. ‘But what is my motivation, darling?’ he asked. His words have stuck with me for thirty years, and made me realise that there is a subtle difference between motive and motivation. Motive provokes action, whereas motivation is the force that drives an individual to take that action. A motive alone isn’t enough to turn a person into a killer. There has to be something else – some intrinsic part of the murderer’s psyche that pushes him or her over the edge. Sometimes, this essential characterisation is overlooked in books. Yes, we know why our killer kills, and we know how our victim dies. But do we understand the aspects of the killer’s personality that drove them from being angry, upset, jealous, to the moment they decided to take someone’s life? Have we seen anything that makes this transformation from a sane and ordinary person into a killer seem feasible? Not all killers are psychopaths whose characteristics are easy to recognise – superficial charm, high intelligence, incapacity for love, lack of remorse. Nor are many people born murderers who get a thrill from the kill. These are easy targets for writers, but it’s far more interesting (and difficult) to write the character who is driven to murder by events, and these killers come in all shapes and sizes. As writers we understand their weak spot – that crucial part of their inner self that pushes them over the edge. And it’s equally important that the reader sees glimpses of this – subtle, but there, nevertheless.  Let’s take an example of the murder of a young woman - Lucy. She was known as a bit of a flirt at work, but Lucy believed it was harmless fun. And yet, she’s dead. There are several suspects, but ultimately we discover that her killer is Malcolm, who works in the same office. She’d flirted with him many times, so Malcolm had decided it was time to take it one step further. He went to her house and made his move. She laughed at him. She threatened to accuse him of sexual harassment – he would lose his job. So Malcolm strangled her. We have a motive - but what is it about Malcolm that made him reach out his hands and put them round her neck? What have we, as readers, seen in him that makes this credible? When defining his character, we must decide if he is perhaps Mad Malc, a young guy who fancies himself and is incensed by her rejection? How dare she push him aside. He’s known to be a man who can have any woman he wants. She’s made a fool of him, and if she reports him, his credibility will be shattered. Or should we instead create mild-mannered Malcolm, a small insignificant guy in his mid-forties who still lives with his mum and wants only to please? If all the writer does is provide the motive and the means, we don’t ever really understand what was going in Malcolm’s mind when he strangled Lucy. Let’s assume our killer is mild-mannered Malcolm, probably the last person you would suspect. What do we see of his character during or prior to the investigation? We should see how much the opinion of others matters to Malcolm. His self-esteem is low (as opposed to Mad Malc – who sees himself as a winner in every way), and mild-mannered Malcolm tries relentlessly to please. Perhaps he brings doughnuts into the office every Friday, or is always the first to leap up to make the coffee. We might see him smile with delight when someone praises his thoughtfulness, but maybe we also see flashes of pain in his eyes when someone teases him about his sycophancy. Something and nothing, but to Malcolm it’s a stab in the guts, and we see a flicker of something dark in his expression. In principle, the motive for murder is the same, whether the killer is Mad Malc - whose loss of face (as well as possibly his job) would be too much to bear - or mild-mannered Malcolm who couldn’t live with the loss of the approval of everyone around him. His job is the only thing that gets him out of the house and away from his domineering mother. It’s never enough to know why. We must understand the character and what drove him to kill. We have to sense his horror at ever being found wanting. As John Standing said, we must understand his motivation, darling!'   ABOUT THE AUTHOR Rachel Abbott is the bestselling author of the Tom Douglas series of books, and more recently the Stephanie King series, which together have sold over 4 million copies and have been translated into over 20 languages. Born and raised in Manchester, Abbott founded her own interactive media company in the 1980s before retiring in 2005. She then moved to Italy where she wrote her first novel, Only the Innocent, which became an international bestseller, reaching number one in the Amazon charts both in the UK and US.  This was followed by bestselling novels The Back Road, Sleep Tight, Stranger Child, Kill Me Again,The Sixth Window, Come a Little Closer, The Shape of Lies, plus a novella, Nowhere Child, which was top of the Kindle Singles chart in the UK for over two years. In 2015 Amazon celebrated the first five years of the Kindle in the UK and announced that Rachel was its number-one bestselling independent author over this period. She was also placed fourteenth in the chart of all authors. Abbott now lives in Alderney in the Channel Islands. Her most recent books are Close Your Eyes, The Murder Game and Right Behind You.    You can sign up to Rachel's own newsletter at her website www.rachel-abbott.com/ To stay up-to-date with all the news from Killer Women follow us on social at the links below. We'd love to hear from you so do keep in touch. Stay safe everyone.         Copyright © 2017 Killer Women, All rights reserved. Get in touch: info@killerwomen.org Hello Crime Club If you enjoy a thriller which features strong female characters who are realistically flawed (yes please!) then rejoice as the marvellous Julia Crouch has a new domestic noir out today. Packed with secrets, lies and fabulous plot twists The New Mother is a truly gripping story about how far people will go to find a family.  Julia Crouch is known as the queen of domestic noir for a reason but what inspired her latest, particularly nerve-shredding thriller? In this month's exclusive the bestselling author of Her Husband’s Lover, explains how her fascination with the outward facing perfection of social media influencer accounts led her to explore parenthood and fandom in way which gets seriously dark.   We hope you continue to enjoy Crime Club as we bring you closer to the stories behind the latest novels from the Killer Women collective.      THE NEW MOTHER JULIA CROUCH Published on 12 October 2021 | Bookouture | eBook and audio Rachel is determined to be the perfect mother. She has a birth plan, with a playlist and a bag ready by the door. She’s chosen a lovely light cream paint for the nursery, and in wide-eyed, innocent Abbie she’s found the perfect person to help her with her baby. After all, every mother needs a bit of help, don’t they?   'Like many people, I have a low-level addiction to social media. I love the way it helps me keep in touch with far-flung friends, and, as a writer with a background in illustration, I particularly relish the visual storytelling opportunities it offers. As a user, I can waste hours scrolling through Instagram, seeing how other people choose to present their lives. But, as with all good things (see also cake and alcohol), too much social media can, of course, be damaging both for the user and the creator. We waste time, get drawn into horrible exchanges that escalate into abuse, and, in the worst cases, we even lose sight of our real selves. I am particularly fascinated by the phenomenon of the influencer. It’s an entirely new, 21st century career, and even though some of the early stalwarts like Zoella and Paris Hilton are adapting and surviving as time moves on, many fall by the wayside by going out of fashion, growing older or simply burning out. Because how exhausting must it be to monetise seemingly every aspect of your life by making it public on your social media channel? At the end of the day, when you sign that contract with Mammon, what do you have left? Do you live your life in order to create Instagrammable moments? Or do the moments become your life? Where does work end and real life begin? Can you ever be honest when you are paid to like products? How do you age? And what about the exposure such a public life forces on you – the darker corners of fandom? At the start of The New Mother, my main character, famous UK influencer Rachel is negotiating all of these questions. Although she has no partner, in order to move through her issues, she decides to go it alone and have a baby. Potentially a massive wake up call to someone whose authentic comes with a hashtag prefix, It’s arguably one of the most real things a person can do. Like every expectant parent, Rachel wants everything to be perfect, so she reaches out to her fans for a live-in mother’s help. One such follower, Abbie, seems to fit the bill entirely. Or does she? While The New Mother explores parenthood, influencer culture and the haves and have-nots of that world, it gets a lot darker than that, as you might expect from a Stephen King fan with previous in writing twisted and twisting stories. So in the end, you will be asking who you are going to trust. Who will you take sides with? And who, ultimately, will get what they want?' Praise for The New Mother: ‘Grips like a vice from the very first page. Julia Crouch is one of the best thriller writers in the business, and The New Mother is her best book yet.’ Erin Kelly, Sunday Times bestselling author of He Said, She Said ‘Creepy, compelling – and oh so credible!’ Rachel Abbott, bestselling author of the DCI Tom Douglas thrillers ‘The sense of menace is overwhelming as the truth emerges, detail by horrifying detail. So gripping that I barely breathed until I’d finished it.’ Jane Casey, bestselling author of The Killing Kind   Julia started off as a theatre director and playwright. While her children were growing up, she swerved into graphic design. After writing and illustrating two children’s books for an MA, she discovered that her great love was writing prose. The picture books were deemed too dark for publication, so, to save the children, she turned instead to writing for adults. Her first book, Cuckoo, was published in 2011, and she has been writing what she calls her Domestic Noir novels ever since. She also writes for TV and teaches on the Crime Writing MA at the University of East Anglia. She has three grown up children and lives in Brighton with her husband and two cats, Keith and Sandra.   You can keep up with all the latest from Julia Crouch by following her on Twitter, Facebook or joining her mailing list via her website http://juliacrouch.co.uk/  To stay up-to-date with all the news from Killer Women follow us on social at the links below. We'd love to hear from you so do keep in touch. Stay safe everyone.         Copyright © 2017 Killer Women, All rights reserved. Get in touch: info@killerwomen.org Hello Crime Clubbers This month we are delighted to bring you an exclusive from Elly Griffiths on publication day of The Midnight Hour, a fabulously entertaining new murder story from the bestselling author of the Dr Ruth Galloway Mysteries. In this specially written feature Elly introduces us to 'A Murder at Tudor Close' - where she explores the origins of Cluedo and the faded glamour of the setting for her latest mystery.   This is the sixth in Elly's wonderful Brighton mysteries series. The Times said ‘if only all history mysteries could be as good as The Midnight Hour‘ and we heartily agree!  We hope you continue to enjoy Crime Club as we bring you closer to the stories behind the latest novels from the Killer Women collective.      THE MIDNIGHT HOUR ELLY GRIFFITHS Published on 30 September 2021 | Quercus | Hardback | £16.99 Also available as ebook & audio. When the theatrical impresario Bert Billington is found dead in his retirement home, no one suspects foul play. But when the postmortem reveals that he was poisoned, suspicion falls on his wife, eccentric ex-Music Hall star Verity Malone. Elly tells the fascinating tale of the location that inspired her latest mystery... 'Settings are difficult. In my case, I have almost used up my hometown of Brighton and my adopted county of Norfolk. I have even, under my own name, exhausted Italy. Where could I set my next book? I didn’t expect to find the perfect murder location on my daily lockdown walk. My route took me across the downs from Saltdean to the almost unbearably picturesque village of Rottingdean. Next to the ancient parish church of St Margaret’s there’s a rather strange building called Tudor Close. Built in the twenties, in the so-called Tudorbethan style, it’s almost too Tudor to be true, full of twisted beams and tiny latticed windows. The house is set low in the ground and now contains several apartments. Some of the entrances are grand, with stained glass and heraldic shields, other doors are low and Hobbit-like, placed at odd angles and almost hidden by ivy. The walled gardens lead into the graveyard. I’ve always been fascinated by the place but am not sure what led me to google it as I walked past that day. The first word that flashed on my phone was ‘murder’. It turned out that, in the 1930s, the entire development was once a hotel, beloved of the rich and famous. Cary Grant and Bette Davis stayed there. The young Julie Andrews sang in the lounge. Tudor Close also boasted a conservatory, a billiard room and a ballroom. Entertainments included murder mystery parties and, whilst hosting one such evening, travelling entertainer Anthony Pratt had an idea. Pratt was a great fan of detective fiction and, together with his wife, Elva, he invented a board game set in the Rottingdean hotel. It was called, ‘Murder at Tudor Close’. Pratt eventually sold his idea to Waddingtons and the game is now known as Cluedo (Clue in America). In the 1950s Tudor Close was converted into private homes. But, as I stood there that summer day, I thought: what if there was a murder at Tudor Close? And that’s how The Midnight Hour starts.'   Praise for The Brighton Mysteries: ‘A piquant mixture of humour, period detail... and truly beguiling characterisation’ Financial Times ‘More than the cosy mystery it initially appears’ Sunday Times ‘An excellent whodunnit... terrific down-at-heal atmosphere’ The Times ‘Enormously engaging... subtle, charming and very good’ Daily Mail About the author: Elly Griffiths has written twenty-four books for adults and three for children. She has appeared in the Sunday Times Bestsellers chart nineteen times to date and is number eighteen on this year’s list of most borrowed authors from libraries in the UK (and one of only two authors to have two titles in the top twenty). Across all series, almost three million copies of her books have been sold (in all editions – print, ebook and audiobook). Her series of Dr Ruth Galloway novels, featuring a forensic archaeologist, are set in Norfolk. There are thirteen books in the series with number fourteen The Locked Room, to be published in February 2022. Her Brighton-based mystery series set in the 1950s and 1960s is partly inspired by her grandfather’s life on the stage as well as the war magician Jasper Maskelyne, who claimed to have spent the war creating large scale illusions to misdirect the enemy. In 2018 Elly wrote her first standalone novel The Stranger Diaries. The novel was a top ten paperback bestseller, selected for the BBC Radio 2 Book Club and as a summer 2019 Richard and Judy book. Her second standalone The Postscript Murders came out in hardback in autumn 2020 and debuted at number seven in the Sunday Times paperback fiction top ten in April this year. Elly also writes the A Girl Called Justice series of mystery novels for children inspired by her mother’s boarding school days; and has written four women’s fiction titles under her real name Domenica de Rosa. Elly Griffiths lives near Brighton with her husband, an archaeologist, and their cat Gus. Awards Elly won the prestigious Edgar Award in 2020, the CWA Dagger in the Library in 2016 and the Mary Higgins Clark Award in 2011. She has been shortlisted five times for the Theakston Crime Novel of the Year, including 2021, and was also shortlisted for this year’s CWA Gold Dagger. Twitter: @ellygriffiths | Instagram: @ellygriffiths17 | Website: ellygriffiths.co.uk | Facebook:EllyGriffithsAuthor To stay up-to-date with all the news from Killer Women follow us on social at the links below. We'd love to hear from you so do keep in touch. Stay safe everyone.         Copyright © 2017 Killer Women, All rights reserved. Get in touch: info@killerwomen.org Hello Crime Clubbers Welcome to a brand new corner of our Crime Club, where we'll be sharing insights, secrets and tips for writing (and reading) the very best in crime fiction. Direct from our writing desks to your inbox, these exposés will entertain, intrigue and unsettle even the most hardened of fans. We hope you enjoy our new series and keep the conversation going over on Twitter or Instagram.  In our first of these very special features, Tammy Cohen proposes a toast to the perfect psychological thriller.       YOU MAY KILL THE BRIDE Tammy Cohen, whose new book, The Wedding Party, takes place at a destination wedding in stunning Kefalonia, lifts the veil on what makes a psychological thriller…   'You are cordially invited to the marriage of the thriller and dark psychological fiction.   This unholy union, commonly known as the psychological thriller, is one of the most consistently popular genres of fiction.   THE HAPPY COUPLE Oh please, let’s not beat around the bush. Psychological thrillers don’t deal with happy, they deal with people who are complex, duplicitous, self-serving and dysfunctional.   Let’s face it, we’re all fascinated by dysfunction—dysfunctional relationships, dysfunctional families. Remember the Tolstoy quote? All happy families resemble each other, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.   Couples in psychological thrillers don’t live in wedded bliss. They test each other, lie to each other, play power games with each other, gaslight each other. Think of Amy and Nick from Gone Girl.   WHERE Though psychological thrillers don’t need a domestic setting, they all explore the primordial human fear of not having a safe refuge, of not being able to trust the people closest to us. Nearly a quarter of all violent incidents take place in the home. Think about that. Characters in psychological thrillers aren’t afraid of the bogeyman in the alley but rather of the husband across the breakfast table or the family next door, playing to our deep-rooted fear that we might not be able to recognise danger or evil, even when we’re looking at it every day.   DRESS CODE Disguise is key. In psychological thrillers characters wear other selves on top of their real selves, like fancy dress.   In fact the whole genre hinges on that gap between who people really are and what they show to the world. Inside that gap is where fear ferments and grows, because if we’re not  showing who we really are, then who are we? And what are we capable of?   Disguise isn’t only for other people. It even extends to ourselves, this idea that our own memories and motives are untrustworthy, and that we’re lying to ourselves as well as to others. People in psychological thrillers often can’t bear their own reality, or the reality of what they’ve done, so they make up stories to protect themselves, and they wear those stories like a cloak.   Psychological thrillers subvert the prevailing dress code, exposing what lies under the disguise, the self we hide away. We all have an internal narrator and most of us would be horrified to share our internal narrative with the world.  But that’s exactly what a psychological thriller does. And that narrator is often unreliable, like Rachel in The Girl on the Train, leaving the reader to guess how much of what we’re being told is real and how much is all in the mind of the person whose head we’re stuck inside.   THEME The genre gets to the heart of what it is to be human and to interact with other humans and the fears that we all have as humans. Unlike spy thrillers or political thrillers, psychological thrillers are universal, they play to the ‘what ifs’ we all grapple with.   The psychological thriller explores our internal state, our internal fears, our relationships, the way we see ourselves in our domestic world, or within a small, claustrophobic group – a wedding party for example - interacting with the people around us. It plays on our fears about things that could go wrong within that contained world giving the reader a greater understanding of what we’re all afraid of and why.   ORDER OF SERVICE First off, there’s life as you know it, safe, predictable… Then it crumbles… Either because it didn’t really exist in the first place or because it was built on shifting sands of lies, or because something happens that shatters that safe life into tiny pieces. Many psychological thrillers hinge on something very small – a split-second decision - which then brings the whole edifice of someone’s life crashing down. There’s the world before and the world after. Someone can make a tiny error of judgment or give in briefly to temptation and, as a result, they lose their footing and then they lose everything.   But life can be like that. The pandemic exposed the fact that normal life actually hangs by a thread. We fool ourselves into believing that the world as we know it is a certain way, that the lives we've built up are concrete and that things will go on exactly as they always have. But everything can change overnight, forcing us to confront the uncomfortable truth that nothing is truly solid under our feet and that life can turn on a sixpence and the tiniest little loose thread can be pulled and pulled until a whole life unravels…   TIL DEATH DO US PART…'   ABOUT THE AUTHOR Tammy Cohen wrote three dark contemporary novels (The Mistress’s Revenge, The War of the Wives, Someone Else’s Wedding) under the name Tamar Cohen, before moving into crime, principally because crime writers seemed to have more fun. Her psychological thrillers The Broken, First One Missing, Dying For Christmas, When She was Bad, They All Fall Down and Stop at Nothing have all been published internationally. Tammy’s first historical mystery, A Dangerous Crossing, written under the pseudonym Rachel Rhys, was a Richard & Judy book club pick. Her second, Fatal Inheritance, came out in 2018.  Her latest novel, The Wedding Party was published in August 2021. As well as writing fiction, Tammy has worked as a journalist for over twenty years, writing for newspapers such as The Times, The Telegraph and magazines including Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan and Woman & Home.   .                          To stay up-to-date with all the news from Killer Women follow us on social at the links below. We'd love to hear from you so do keep in touch. Stay safe everyone.         Copyright © 2017 Killer Women, All rights reserved. Get in touch: info@killerwomen.org Hey Crime Club Welcome to a special bonus edition of the Killer Women newsletter. We are delighted to bring you an exclusive from Paula Hawkins on publication day of her wickedly dark, compulsive new thriller, A Slow Fire Burning. You are probably one of the 23 million readers ofThe Girl on the Train (2015) - one of the top 5 fiction hardbacks since records began. It has been published in 50 countries and 40+ languages, and was a No.1 global bestseller. In the UK it broke the all-time record for the number of weeks at No.1 on Bookscan. Into the Water (2017) was also a global No.1 bestseller, spending twenty weeks in the Sunday Times HB fiction Top 10 and six weeks at No.1. It sold 4 million copies worldwide. You may have ready read the rave reviews for A Slow Fire Burning. The Observer described Paula's latest thriller as 'shocking, moving, full of heart . . . A Slow Fire Burning shows a writer at the height of her powers' whilst the Daily Mail called the novel 'utterly compelling.'  The Guardian wrote ''A Slow Fire Burning is a treat: utterly readable, moving in parts and saturated with the kind of localised detail that made The Girl on the Train so compelling.'  Now Paula gives us her thoughts about writing crime... We hope you continue to enjoy Crime Club as we bring you closer to the stories behind the latest novels from the Killer Women collective.        A SLOW FIRE BURNING PAULA HAWKINS Published on 31 August 2021 | Doubleday | Hardback | £20 Also available as ebook & audio. Paula Hawkins on why it's time to move on from crime novels focusing on the dead bodies of women. “…all eyes on the girl, the hero, at last.” So ends Megan Abbott’s new psychological thriller, The Turnout, which centres on two sisters who run a ballet school in suburban America. I loved this blistering novel for many reasons, perhaps chiefly for its treatment of women, of girls. So far from the cliché - the broken, battered, naked bodies on the opening page – in this novel, women are heroes. Not perfect, not pleasing and pretty and pliant, not *shudders* likable, but real, in all their beautiful and terrible flesh and blood. Agents of their own destiny and stars of their own show. Ever since The Girl on the Train was published more than six years ago, I have been thinking about writing crime. Why we do it, how we do it, the right way to do it, the wrong way. I have been thinking about how depictions of women in crime novels have shifted, about the soaring popularity of true crime and the many ways in which crime writing is analysed and dissected, both by those who participate in it, and those who do not. Crime writers are frequently criticised for glorifying or fetishising violence against women – oddly enough, quite often by the same people who rhapsodise about television show such as The Killing (opens with a brutalised, half-naked teenager fleeing in terror from an unseen predator), The Bridge (opens with two women who have been cut in half) or Mare of Easttown (opens with a beautiful, naked dead girl lying broken in a river bed, displayed for all to see). My new novel, A Slow Fire Burning, features one character who has written a crime novel and another who is a voracious reader of the genre. As I was creating these characters, I was thinking about their literary preferences and prejudices as well as my own, grappling with the notion of the right way to write about crime. But instead of finding answers, I turned up only questions: is there too much violence against women in crime novels? Almost certainly. Given how much violence against women is committed in the real world, wouldn’t it be odd if crime writers neglected to address it? I think so. Could we do with fewer beautiful, naked, female bodies on the opening pages of thrillers? Are beautiful, naked, male bodies an improvement? Should justice be done? Good triumph over evil? Even if that so rarely happens in real life? What struck me when thinking of some of my favourites – Laura Lippman, Tana French, Barbara Vine, Kate Atkinson, Shirley Jackson, Dennis Lehane, Patricia Highsmith, Cormac McCarthy – was just how broad the genre is, how much it encompasses, from slick concept thrillers through cosy crime to the sort of character-driven, thought-provoking noir that Megan Abbott writes. There are so many ways to write well about crime, whether it be darkly or gorily, comically or tragically. It is time we laid the critical cliché about crime novels, the one about broken, battered, naked bodies on the opening page, to rest."   Laura has spent most of her life being judged. She's seen as hot-tempered, troubled, a loner. Some even call her dangerous. Miriam knows that just because Laura is witnessed leaving the scene of a horrific murder with blood on her clothes, that doesn't mean she's a killer. Bitter experience has taught her how easy it is to get caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Carla is reeling from the brutal murder of her nephew. She trusts no one: good people are capable of terrible deeds. But how far will she go to find peace?   These leading women have something within that is eating away at them - a need for revenge, for love, for closure…for something that has been burning inside them for years and years. A Slow Fire Burning is published on August 31 by Doubleday Praise for A Slow Fire Burning: 'From the first sentence to the last, this explosive, startling novel grabs you by the throat and doesn't let go.' Kate Mosse 'Twists and turns like a great thriller should, but it's also deep, intelligent and intensely human' Lee Child 'Gripping and intriguing, I loved every moment' S J Watson 'Twists and turns galore...Paula Hawkins is a genius.' Lisa Jewell 'Dark and disturbing, this twisted story with its cast of damaged characters builds to a brilliant conclusion. This one will stay with you for a long time. 'Shari Lapena 'The queen of the psychological thriller is back with her best book yet. It's such an addictive read . . . an absolute must-read' Prima 'Paula Hawkins at her best.' Renee Knight About the author: PAULA HAWKINS worked as a journalist for fifteen years before turning her hand to fiction. Born and brought up in Zimbabwe, Paula moved to London in 1989 and has lived there ever since. Her first thriller, The Girl on the Train, has been a global phenomenon, selling 23 million copies worldwide. Published in over forty languages, it has been a No.1 bestseller around the world and was a No.1 box office hit film starring Emily Blunt. Into the Water, her second stand-alone thriller, has also been a global No.1 bestseller, spending twenty weeks in the Sunday Times hardback fiction Top 10 bestseller list, and six weeks at No.1. To stay up-to-date with all the news from Killer Women follow us on social at the links below. We'd love to hear from you so do keep in touch. Stay safe everyone.         Copyright © 2017 Killer Women, All rights reserved. Get in touch: info@killerwomen.org Hello Crime Club Whatever the British weather throws at us this summer we hope you have a chance to put your feet up and get stuck into a great book. August sees two smashers by Killer Women - this week the fabulously gripping thriller by Tammy Cohen, The Wedding Party, followed on the 31st August by the much anticipated publication of Paula Hawkin's A Slow Fire Burning. Stay tuned to Crime Club for an exclusive from Paula a little later in the month. If you have been dreaming of sun, sea and foreign shores then we have a real treat in store with The Wedding Party. Tammy Cohen turns her wicked pen to a wedding of dreams set on the beautiful island of Kefalonia. However with a nightmare bridezilla, strange plus-ones, family drama and an attention-seeking relatives, you might be glad you are holidaying at home! Lisa Jewell said: ‘Tammy Cohen has hit the ball out of the park with The Wedding Party, a sparkling, thrilling whodunit with a cast of extraordinarily well realised characters and a setting that will take your breath away. I read it in twenty four hours and was bereft when it ended.'  Happy holiday reading everybody.      THE WEDDING PARTY TAMMY COHEN Published on 19th August 2021 | Black Swan | Paperback | £7.99. Also available as ebook & audio. Tammy Cohen gives Crime Club an exclusive low-down on the inspiration and research for her latest, highly entertaining novel: 'When I first started thinking about the book that would become The Wedding Party in the early summer of 2019, I knew I wanted to write something escapist and unashamedly glamorous. My previous book, Stop at Nothing, was a claustrophobic domestic thriller set in the familiar streets of my north London neighbourhood, so I deliberately chose to place my new story somewhere thousands of miles away, with stunning scenery that allowed me to sit down at my inner-city desk and immerse myself in lush green hillsides falling away into crystal blue waters. I had no idea when I began the book, that I’d be writing the last parts in lockdown, gazing out of my window at a sky devoid of planes, my world restricted to the route of my daily walk around my local park, or what a relief it would become to open my computer and return to sunny Kefalonia with its fragrant wild herbs and plunging cliffs and hidden coves.        It’s just a shame about the dead body… But I get ahead of myself… Having decided on a setting, I needed a theme. Weirdly for someone who has chosen not to get married, I’ve always been fascinated by the theatre of weddings. The ritual, the dressing up, the heightened emotions. If you don’t cry at a wedding who even are you? It’s the perfect backdrop for a novelist – a diverse group of characters brought together in a setting outside of their individual comfort zones and plied with inhibition-killing booze. Family members reunited, with all the attendant risk of unresolved tensions flooding to the surface. A day where all normal conventions are set aside and, no matter how precise the planning, anything might yet happen. Good or bad… Til death do us part… Researching the book, I fell into a bridezilla sinkhole. The bride who insisted all her bridesmaids dye their hair brown so that she’d be the only blonde. The bride who gave her heavier bridesmaids diet plans so they wouldn’t ruin the ‘aesthetic’ of the photographs, the one who wouldn’t let her maid of honour wear her glasses so she had to stumble around half blind. Planning a wedding is high pressure – all those decisions, all that money. No wonder sometimes the bride – and/or groom – don’t behave as well as they might. No wonder sometimes tempers become dangerously frayed. With a destination wedding, the stakes are higher still. The guests have had to take annual leave and arrange child care and book expensive flights. All to arrive at a location they might not have chosen for themselves, together with people they might usually go out of their way to avoid. Worst of all, there’s no escape. All the guests in Lucy Collins’ and Jason Beazant’s wedding party arrive at the luxury Paradise View Hotel and Spa on Kefalonia’s rugged north-west coast nursing secrets. All have something to hide. One of them will never be going home.'        The Wedding Party is published on August 19th by Black Swan Praise for The Wedding Party: ‘Claustrophobic, creepy and page-turning, a surprising and original domestic noir thriller.’ ROSAMUND LUPTON 'I read this straight through, only stopping to sleep. I absolutely loved it.' JANE FALLON ‘Vibrant characters, pitch-perfect dialogue, and trademark piercing observation all set against a stunning Grecian backdrop. Another belter from Tammy Cohen. I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough.’AMANDA JENNINGS ‘A bridezilla, an idyllic setting, a family with secrets and mysterious strangers – this book has everything. Pacey and full of surprises – loved it.’ CATHERINE COOPER, bestselling author of The Chalet 'An engrossing read.' LESLEY KARA, bestselling author of The Rumour ‘Glamorous and gripping, this novel transported me from rainy London right onto a sun-drenched Greek beach. I loved it.’ CASS GREEN 'A realistic and modern thriller, with a totally relatable premise.' GILLIAN MACALLISTER 'A chilling and completely gripping tale.' JANE CASEY ‘Brilliantly thrilling.’ JENNY COLGAN ‘THE WEDDING PARTY positively fizzes with energy. Tammy Cohen just gets better and better. A genuine page turner with characters that leap off the page.’ EMMA CURTIS   About the author: TAMMY COHEN (who previously wrote under her formal name, Tamar Cohen) has a growing backlist of acclaimed novels of domestic noir, including The Mistress’s Revenge, The War of the Wives and Someone Else’s Wedding. Her break-out psychological suspense thriller was The Broken, followed by Dying for Christmas, First One Missing, When She Was Bad, They All Fall Down and Stop at Nothing. She is also the author of Clean Break, a Quick Reads novel. She is a member of the Killer Women crime writing collective and lives in north London with her partner and three (nearly) grown children, plus one badly behaved dog. Chat with her on Twitter @MsTamarCohen, Instagram @tammycohenwriter or at www.tammycohen.co.uk. To stay up-to-date with all the news from Killer Women follow us on social at the links below. We'd love to hear from you so do keep in touch. 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