1. In your own words, could you please tell us about Dead Heat?
Dead Heat is set in mainland Greece – on the Mani Peninsula – during one long very hot summer. It’s about Matt Grimshaw, a journalist down on his luck, who goes to stay with two of his oldest friends whose gorgeous house has been blighted by a tech billionaire’s massive new property across the bay. You know at the outset that one of the four has been murdered and another arrested, but who and why you don’t find out until the very last page. It’s about wealth and entitlement, envy and love, and what it’s like to be an outsider.
2. What was your inspiration for Dead Heat?
The novel was partly inspired by White Lotus, partly by The Great Gatsby. I’m always intrigued by the clash of culture and upbringing, and how friendships withstand, or don’t, the passage of time.
3. Since Dead Heat is set in Greece, what drew you to frame the narrative around the Mani Peninsula in particular?
I’ve always wanted to write about the Mani, which is the southernmost point of mainland Europe, since I read Patrick Leigh Fermor’s travel book Mani as a teenager. I hitched there as a young woman and the landscape is extraordinary, incredibly harsh and unforgiving, but also very beautiful. For centuries the Mani was riven by family feuds – it’s why there are so many towers in the region – so it seemed the perfect location for a fictional feud of my own.
4. A big part of Dead Heat involves character relationships and hidden motivations. Could you tell us more about how you build suspenseful relationships?
Sometimes I have a slim idea for a plot – a set up and a twist – which I then drive through, but more often than not it’s a relationship that gets me thinking in the first place, and the relationship that then drives the plot on. If ever I go wrong and go back and rewrite it’s because the relationship isn’t properly developed. I’m as fascinated by friendship as I am by love, how complicated both are and how easily they can tip – either temporarily or permanently – into hate. I like an unreliable narrator that the reader starts to like, even though they really shouldn’t.
5. When our Crime Collective readers are enjoying Dead Heat, is there anything that you would like our readers to closely observe?
Good question! So much of what I do are the tricks of a magician – distraction and misdirection – so I mustn’t give too much away. But I would suggest paying close attention to Celia’s relationship with all the male characters, in particular her body language.
6. Were there moments in the writing process where you were surprised by the development of your characters or did you have a clear and direct vision?
I had a fairly clear vision of where the characters would end up, though the final twist was one that came to me late in the process. I had an idea that was adjacent to it, shall we say, but everything fell properly into place as I was writing. As a novelist, you feel a sort of thrill when you reach a point when there is only one solution, one end game, and when that is both surprising and satisfying, it is a very nice feeling. It doesn’t happen with every book. In the past I’ve occasionally fiddled with an ending to make it more thrilling, but I’ve always felt a little bit uncomfortable if that twist doesn’t tally completely with how I imagined the characters would behave. It’s a balance between plot and psychology, I guess. In Dead Heat they felt to me perfectly aligned.
Sabine's Book Recommendations:
My two all time favourite psychological thrillers are Patrick Hamilton’s Hangover Square and Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley. In the former, George Bone, who has periods of ‘deadness’, is consumed with a desire to kill Netta, the girl he’s in love with. Set in London in the days leading up to the second world war, it’s about madness, obsession and despair. Tom Ripley, on the other hand, is a master of cool, a confidence trickster, a psychopath. We watch him do terrible things and yet in Highsmith’s clever hands we are somehow persuaded to will him on, to hope – even as he bludgeons some hapless fool to death – that he gets away with it. Funnily enough, the book I’m reading now, does similar things with your emotions. It’s a new novel - Tillinghast by Clare Cavenagh (out in June 26) – which is a vampire novel with a difference. Poor old Stutley is literally his own worst enemy. It’s dark and sad, but also very funny.
