THE PLOT THICKENS

Author Lucy Foley 'talks' to her characters while writing them, literally. As her latest murder mystery releases, Foley reveals the process of finding what excites her, creating locations through writing, and what it takes to make up an airtight storyline

- SAMREEN TUNGEKAR

GRAZIA: Before delving into the thrillers, you wrote historical novels. What inspired the change in genre?

LUCY FOLEY: I’ve always just tried to write a book that excites me and not to worry too much about genre. I was meant to be writing another historical book when I travelled up to a remote spot in the Scottish Highlands for a holiday and it struck me – as the snow began to fall – that it would be the perfect spot to set a modern take on a golden-age murder mystery. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, so I started writing.

G: This is your fourth thriller. How much of a role do real people, locations, and instances play in formulating your fiction?

LF: Real places are very important in terms of inspiration and research, but I prefer to write fictionalised places that borrow from several real locales. As for people, my characters aren’t based on anyone I’ve met, and building them ‘from scratch’ is one of of the things I most enjoy about writing, though I wonder if they might, at the start, be inspired tenuously by a gesture or a line of dialogue or a figure I’ve glimpsed.