It’s question I’m frequently asked during book events, or by readers so here’s what inspired each of my ten psychological thrillers…

My early thrillers were inspired by my fears:

The Accident/(Before I Wake, US title) – fear of a psycho ex coming back into my life

The Lie – fear of friends turning against me when I needed them most

The Missing – fear of my son going missing.

The next two were inspired by news stories:

The Escape – a woman is accused of being an unfit mother and risks her daughter being taken away by the courts, so has to go on the run with her child.

The Fear – a woman groomed by her teacher, and taken to France by him, takes revenge when she spots him grooming another teenager.

One of my books was inspired by Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None:

Sleep – a woman begins receiving scary notes after a car accident, takes a job in a hotel on the Scottish Isle of Rum, but the notes continue. Her stalker is one of the guests.

Strangers – which begins with three strangers standing around a dead body, was inspired by me thinking about loneliness and how a crime might bring three lonely people together.

Her Last Holiday came about because I’m obsessed with wellness gurus, how the industry is unregulated, and how easy it would be to cover up a crime on a wellness retreat.

The Guilty Couple – I wanted to write a heist but not for money or diamonds. Instead my character, who has served five years in prison for a crime she didn’t commit, organises her friends to help her steal the evidence that will prove that her husband framed her.

Every Move You Make – I so enjoyed writing The Guilty Couple I wanted to write another book about victims taking control of their lives. I read an article in the New York Times about trackers and thought, ‘what if a group of stalking victims decided to turn the tables on their stalkers and placed trackers on each other’s stalkers…’

And that’s all my psych thrillers, apart from the one I’m writing now (I’ll tell you about that one when I’ve actually finished it!)