Today is publication day for The Girl in the Van by Helen Matthews, who joins me on the blog to talk about her new psychological suspense thriller and her writing life.
HM: Thanks, Graham, for hosting me and for rooting out policing glitches in the storyline. I write psychological suspense because I’m fascinated by the darker side of human nature and by contemporary crime. I don’t have the technical background in policing, forensics or law to write detective stories so my books are ‘procedure light’. I’m lucky to have a close family member who’s a serving response officer and she’s been able to check the procedural content in my three previous novels. But the nature of the crimes and degree of police involvement in this new book, The Girl in the Van , required more forensic checking.
Psychological suspense is a sub-genre within crime, adjacent and overlapping with the psychological thriller (think Gone Girl, Girl on a Train). It includes domestic noir and family noir and has been very popular with readers in recent years. Well-known authors who write in this genre include Lisa Jewell, Erin Kelly and Louise Candlish.
Psych suspense doesn’t usually open with a body discovered in a canal or locked room. There are no chalk marks on the pavement and no detective (or journalist or amateur sleuth) painstakingly investigating the victim’s life, and circumventing red herrings, to solve the murder. In psychological suspense it’s the ‘why dunnit’ rather than the ‘who dunnit’ that keeps readers turning the pages. Typically central characters may be unreliable narrators, or flawed or just ordinary people who make bad mistakes with life-changing consequences.
GB: Tell us about The Girl in the Van, What’s the story about?
HM: The Girl in the Van is a twisty page turner with three interwoven plots (Laura’s story, Ellie’s story and Miriana’s story). The main narrative is from the viewpoint of Laura, a former teacher, who’s lived a solitary existence since a life-changing event involving her sixteen year old daughter, Ellie. Escaping to London, Laura leaves her partner Gareth in Wales and refuses to tell anyone her new address. For two years she struggles on in a mundane job. Then makes an attempt to re-join the world. She buys an old campervan and books a place on a group holiday at a campsite in Tenby. Here, her path crosses with a teenage girl, Miriana, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Ellie. As Laura discovers more of Miriana’s story, chilling parallels to her own life emerge.
Much as I hate giving away plot spoilers, the book has several intertwined storylines so I’ll reveal one of them. Miriana’s story is about abandonment, grooming and entrapment into a ‘county lines‘ drug smuggling network. This is where vulnerable teens are groomed by gangs and used to carry drugs from cities out to smaller towns or rural areas. As you’ll know, this hideous crime impacts children in our society, many of them much younger than my character, Miriana. Once lured into ‘county lines’ gangs it can be very hard for victims to break free. Recent survey research shows public awareness of this crime is lower than of other forms of human trafficking and slavery. Sometimes parents don’t realise their own child is involved because they don’t spot the signs. So as well as writing a gripping page-turner, I wanted to bring the plight of these young people to wider attention.
GB: You’ve written about human trafficking before, haven’t you? What’s your interest in this subject?
HM: My debut novel After Leaving the Village published in 2017 was about a young Albanian woman, Odeta, who travelled to London on the promise of a well-paid career, with a man she believed was her boyfriend. I write at the human level (not about large scale international trafficking gangs) and aim to be sensitive to my characters, to show Odeta as a young woman from an ordinary family, someone’s daughter, the girl down the street. This novel invited readers to walk in her shoes, experiencing the growing horror as it dawns on her she’s been duped – trafficked by the man she thought loved her.
Odeta’s story is fiction but sadly this is something that happens to women from around the world, and even to UK nationals in our own country (remember the Rochdale and Rotherham girls?) It’s easy for us with our privilege and savvy knowledge of the world to ask: Why didn’t she see what was coming? But the whole point of grooming is that perpetrators spend weeks, months – even years, winning their victims’ trust. The victims don’t know it’s a trap – until it’s been sprung.
If I’ve made that novel sound unremittingly grim, it isn’t. There’s a parallel storyline about Kate, a journalist, who is trying to wean her young son off online gaming by creating a ‘village’ community on her London street. Meanwhile in the house next door…
When I began researching After Leaving the Village I was already a supporter of an anti-slavery charity called Unseen. Their founder and director read my novel and thought it could raise awareness so she offered to write a foreword and help promote the novel. Later, I was appointed an ambassador for that charity. I give talks to groups about the research I did into human trafficking and my writing journey and donate all my talk fees and a percentage of royalties to the charity.
GM: I gather The Girl in the Van is your fourth novel. What were numbers two and three about?
HM: Those were more mainstream psychological suspense. Lies Behind the Ruin is domestic noir set in France. I drafted the story pre-Brexit when a family could still up sticks and relocate to France, without a job or other red tape, to renovate a ruin and start a new life. The story was about how you can’t outrun secrets and lies from your past. The damage you thought you’d left behind will stalk you because you can’t build a new life on toxic foundations.
Façade is a kind of ‘family noir’ about a family torn apart by the death of a toddler. His older sisters were teenagers when he died. Fast forward twenty years to 2019 and one of the sisters, who was estranged, returns from living in Spain and triggers an explosion of jealousy, revenge and revelations about what really happened that summer.
GB: When and where do you prefer to write?
If I’m working on a new novel and excited about the plot and the characters, I like to capture the ideas while inspiration is flowing. I’ll start writing in the morning and continue until late at night with only short breaks to eat. I’ve tried writing in coffee shops but it doesn’t work for me so I write at home. I have a study but I often move around different rooms and work in my daughter’s bedroom or in the dining room where there’s no view to distract me. In summer, I take my laptop into the garden as long as I can keep the sun off my screen.
GB: Do you sometimes base your characters on people you know?
Until recently, I’d have said ‘Never.’ Like all authors, I might take snippets of body language from people I know to flesh out a fictional character. Or I might use an incident someone’s told me, or snatches of overheard conversation. Trains were brilliant for eavesdropping though I’ve not taken many rail journeys in the last couple of years.
A few months ago we took our rescue puppy, Homer, a lively street dog from Romania, to a doggie daycare centre. He desperately needed to socialise with other dogs. I dropped him off but had driven less than two miles on the way home when the call came through from the centre owner. ‘Come and fetch him.’ Our poor little dog was too exuberant and noisy for them to handle! He was expelled from dog kindergarten within fifteen minutes of arriving. So in the book I’m working on now, I’ve given one of the evil characters the name of that horrible doggie day care owner.
GB: Does she die a horrible death?
HM: If I told you I’d have to kill you first!
GB: Who are your favourite crime novelists?
In my own psychological suspense genre, as well as those I’ve mentioned earlier, I enjoy Gillian McAllister (How to Disappear), Clare Mackintosh (I Let You Go, Emma Curtis (The Night You Left and Katharine Johnson) (The Suspects).
The list is endless.
I do read mainstream crime novels but tend not to read series (sorry – I don’t binge-watch Netflix, either). Two of my favourites are Val McDermid and Tim Weaver. I also have a fascination with the novels of Mo Hayder (Birdman , The Treatment , Wolf ), who sadly died last year at quite a young age. Her novels can be gruesome, graphic and downright shocking but they’re very well written. I admire her bravery in depicting such horror on the page, though I could never write that detail myself.
And, of course, I’m looking forward to reading your debut crime novel Bad for Good when it comes out in June, Graham.
GB: Thanks, Helen. I’ve enjoyed our chat and I wish you every success with the new book.
