One Bad Turn blog tour: interview with Sinead Crowley

The third novel in Sinead Crowley’s series about D.S. Claire Boyle begins with a bang. Claire is at her doctor, for reasons we won’t know until later, when a crazed woman arrives with a gun. As events unfold, we learn that the woman has a history with the doctor, and that a dead child is involved – something which is difficult for Claire to fully take on board, given that her own baby is on the other side of a set of very thin walls.

This is a gripping and immersive psychological thriller that impressively balances the ongoing concerns of the regular characters with the dilemmas of the new, and one that insists you keep turning the pages. I absolutely adored reading this book – it is smart, insightful and engaging. Very much looking forward to the next installment in this impressive series.

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And I’m delighted to be able to interview Sinead as part of her blog tour for the new book!

One Bad Turn is the third book featuring D.S. Claire Boyle – does it get easier or harder to write the novels as you go along (confidence that you can finish vs pressure to maintain quality, etc)?

I wouldn’t say easier, exactly but I enjoyed writing ‘One Bad Turn’ more than the other two. There is a sense on book three that you have some clue about what you are doing! You are aware you finished a book before and therefore you’re reasonably sure you will get through this one too. Also, I’m very fond of Claire Boyle and am eager to see where her journey takes her so I was very happy to return to her story.

This book does a magnificent job of balancing the ongoing storylines of the police officers involved with being accessible to new readers – how did you find this balance?

Thank you very much! One of my favourite things about crime fiction is the series element, watching the central characters develop alongside the individual plots so I’m delighted you felt I achieved that. One of the things that helped this time was making Claire a witness to the action as well as the investigator, it meant I could introduce her back story naturally, particularly since her baby was involved as well.

The portrayal of teenage girls, both in the past and in the present, is really astute – what was the research like for this?

Again, thank you for that. The ‘research’ for the flashback chapters wasn’t too hard as they were based on my own experiences, for example buying Doc Martens at the back of the ILAC centre, and going to our local rugby club disco. Getting the voice of the contemporary teenager was more difficult but I used social media and YA fiction as research. At one stage I also texted my fellow author Louise O’Neill to find out what phrase people use for ‘kissing’ now! Turns out, a lot of the time it’s just kissing….

What’s your research process like generally? Do you talk to real detectives etc and at what stage of the writing process does it happen?

I have to admit that I retrospectively research, I tend to write the book first and then fill in the gaps, finding out afterwards if something ‘could happen’ and changing it if I’ve gone badly wrong. I’ve been working as a journalist for 20 years, so even though I don’t work in the area of crime I have a reasonable knowledge of police procedure and my husband is a courts reporter so he’s very helpful too. But to be honest, I know some of the events in the book probably wouldn’t happen that way in real life but that’s the joy of fiction – you get to make things up! As long as the reader believes in the story and isn’t pulled out of it by something completely implausible then I’m happy.

Click to enlarge and see where Sinead will be appearing online next…

The fictionalised Dalkey/Killiney area in the novel is rendered beautifully – what drew you to this setting?

It’s just such a gorgeous part of the world, isn’t it? I don’t live anywhere near there but we often go walking out that direction on weekends and I love it very much. I also like the idea of it being a self-contained area, it suited the plot for ‘Fernwood’ to have that village atmosphere but to also be close enough to Dublin for Claire to be able to investigate. I took a lot of liberties with geography – that’s why I gave it a different name, I didn’t want someone from the area to say ‘oh you can’t walk to the hill from there’ or something because again I didn’t want to drag them out of the story. But I did have an interesting walk up Killiney Hill one day with a friend who lives locally, and I hope no one was listening as we discussed the best place to set a particular pivotal death scene!

What’s the editorial process like for you – who sees your first draft? Do you do detailed outlines before writing?

No, I don’t really outline at all, at least not more than a chapter or two ahead. I tend to start each book with an image and work from there. In the case of ‘One Bad Turn’ I was thinking about two women, facing each other in a confined space. I knew they used to be friends and that one now hated the other, and it then was my job to work out why. I knew, roughly how the story would end but I had no idea, when I started writing how to get there. I prefer to work like that. I don’t really have a rough draft either – I tend to work on each chapter, over and over again until I’m happy, so by the time I get to the end I have what I’d call a reasonable working draft rather than a first one.

The social commentary in the novel is very sharp – I particularly love the observation about how the marriage equality referendum prompted same-sex couples to deal with the ‘marriage issue’, which actually came up at a recent panel I was part of. Do you worry that this might ‘date’ the novel, or is it more important to authentically represent a particular time and place?

As the novel deals with the repercussions of the financial crash, it was always going to be set in a particular time period, so I wasn’t worried about mentioning the marriage referendum. Philip Flynn, the character you are talking about, is probably my favourite person to write. He happens to be gay but he’s also many other things – a transplanted culchie, a good cop, a great friend – so I was having a bit of fun with him in that section too! The other point about the Claire Boyle books is that her baby is a big part of the plot, so I have to be careful to keep the timeline accurate. The books will age as the baby ages, in real time.

Claire’s husband has had issues with her dedication to her work from the beginning of the series. She’s a devoted mother but at the same time it never seems to be enough. Do you think women today still face the ‘choice’ between being brilliant at their job and being a ‘good mother’?

I’m glad you pointed out that it’s her husband has the issues! Claire is fine – she’s not guilty about doing both. She is a great mother and a great cop and feels she can do both but she doesn’t have the support at home to make that easy. I know lots of women who do both but they have to have good back up, either from family or paid help or both. So no, I don’t believe you have to choose one over the other but you do need support and she unfortunately doesn’t have it. Matt said, before they had children that he would be the main parent in the home but it didn’t work out the way he envisaged it.

If you’re allowed to say, what are you working on next?

I’m in the very early stages of a new book but what I can say is that I’m moving the action outside of Dublin, to the south west of Ireland. Think small villages, a country house, the valley of the squinting windows – and a stranger in town!

And finally, which authors – both crime/psychological thriller and others – do you admire? What have you read recently that’s impressed you?

There are so many. To list just a small number, Erin Kelly, Jane Casey, Alex Marwood are consistently good. Liz Nugent is a terrific author and her books are genuinely unique. I also recently read a reissued book from the 1950s called The Hours Before Dawn by Celia Fremlin which is as fine an example of psychological fiction as you’ll find.

In the non crime genre recent books by Molly McCluskey and Min Jin Lee will definitely be on my best of 2017 list too.

Thanks so much to Sinead for these great answers and to Alainna at Quercus! You can follow Sinead on the twitter machine here and order One Bad Turn here.