Tell us a little about the setting for The Parkwood Murders? What drew you to setting a murder mystery in a holiday resort?
It's set at a holiday village called Parkwood Dorset. Parkwood has a handful of holiday villages dotted around the country, often in woodland. Parkwood Dorset has hundreds of lodges and leisure activities for all the family: high-ropes, a spa, cycle hire and a pool complex, in which a body is found at 4am, as the wave machine goes back and forth. This is the day after a whole new cohort of guests have just checked in.
I’d had the idea for this a number of years ago, having had some experience of this type of holiday. It’s the ultimate locked room mystery, but with hundreds of suspects - not just the guests, but the staff and management of the resort. It means that DS Nicola Bridge and DC Harry Ward have their work cut out not only with the amount of people they have to deal with, but they’re racing against the clock as they try to complete the investigation before everyone is due to leave at the end of the week!
There’s so much that’s appealing about the setting: the different precincts, the different types of characters that these holidays attract, the upstairs/downstairs between the staff and the guests, but also the fact that Nicola and Harry (and the third member of their team, Mel, who is the ultimate pessimist/moaner) have to set up camp in one of the lodges, not only turning it into an ad hoc incident room, but also sleeping there, all crammed in together, to maximise time.
Early readers have loved the character dynamics between the core team of detectives? Do you have a favourite character?
The great thing about writing the second book in a series (even though this is designed to be enjoyed as a standalone too) is that the foundations for the characters have been laid in the first book, Death at the White Hart, and now I get the chance to play with them, deepen them and have even more fun. The novel is as much about our main characters as it is a page-turning mystery. I love Nicola for her determination and humour in the face of insurmountable odds (not only is this investigation huge, but her teenage son is playing up – just as in the first novel she has to wrestle with the competing demands of work and home life). Her developing relationship (both professional and personal) with Harry is one of the key dynamics powering the books. But I’ve particularly loved giving Mel his moment in the sun in this book — he brings lots of humour and surprises with him.
The TV series for Death at the White Hart is in development. What's the difference between writing it as a book, and as a series?
They’re very different beasts, as everyone knows. For the series you have to find ways to dramatise the internal monologues and thought processes of characters through action and visuals. The job is to find cinematic analogues for elements of the novel and ensure that you preserve what people loved while also making it stand up as a piece of drama on its own. I’m loving the process of doing that.
Can you recommend a book you've loved recently?
Like so many others, I devoured Abir Mukherjee’s The Pinnacle recently: vivid, sharp and full of great characters. I’m a fan of Jenni Godfrey’s writing so The Barbecue At Number 9 had me booked. Looking ahead, for pre-orders, I recently got a chance to read Michael Robotham’s Tell Me Something True which had me gripped and moved while on holiday. And I’m currently reading an advance copy of Ian Rankin’s The Heights which is, of course, fantastic.
