Someone Else’s Skin: the secrets
inside a new crime series
As soon as I started writing crime,
I knew I wanted to write a series. I do love standalones (many of my favourite
books are one-off psychological thrillers), but there’s something addictive
about a series. I can’t imagine ever tiring of Highsmith’s Ripley books, for
instance. Each one peels another layer from Tom’s character, or adds a layer.
You can get hooked on a series; maybe it’s the obsessive in me that loves them
so much.
Much of
the thrill in writing Someone Else’s Skin came from knowing it would be
the first in a series; I’d be spending a lot of time with these characters. I
wanted readers hooked, enough to read a second book, and hopefully a third and
fourth. My characters, as well as being people that readers could warm to,
needed layers and mystery. As a storyteller, I had to perform a balancing act
between intrigue and empathy. But I love a challenge.
Can we get
close to a character who is keeping secrets? Doesn’t closeness require trust,
full disclosure? Well, perhaps. That’s where the balancing act comes in. My
heroine Marnie Rome is keeping secrets from everyone, including herself. She’s
even keeping secrets from me; it’s one of the reasons I find her fascinating to
write. In fact, the whole series is predicated on secrets. From the waffle I
was calling a synopsis, my publishers came up with this strapline: “Some
secrets keep us safe, others will destroy us.”
When I
started Someone Else’s Skin, I began to obsess about the secrets that
Marnie was keeping. In the second book (which I’ve just finished), we learn a
lot more about her, but it’s still just the tip of the iceberg. She does a mean
line in double-bluffing, too.
This, for
me, is the secret of a good crime series: the gradual discovery of the central
character(s) through an ever-varied set of challenges. Of course, plenty of
long-running crime series do splendidly without a notable character arc for
their heroes. Sherlock Holmes, whom I’ve loved since I was ten, changed very
little over the course of his adventures, but each time there was a flash of
something new in his character..? Those were the moments I cherished (when
Watson takes a bullet in The Adventure of the Three Garridebs –
brilliant). And I love the depth and breadth of the character arc in the Dexter
series.
For the
Marnie Rome series, I aim to pick my crimes with care, so that the solving of
them will bring out the best (and sometimes the worst) in Marnie. The second
book in the series is about lost children. We’re going to learn about the kind
of person Marnie was when she was sixteen, and the ways in which she’s changed
(and the ways in which she hasn’t). We’re told as writers to put our heroes up
trees and throw stones at them. Well, in the next book, Marnie might wish
she was up a tree being pelted with stones, in preference to the fixes I’ve
landed her in. Maybe in time she’ll give up all her secrets, but I can’t help
wishing she won’t. I’m having far too much fun hunting them down.
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