Marnie Rome books 2, 3 and 4

My happy news of the week is that Headline have asked for two more Marnie Rome books, to follow on from Someone Else's Skin (out in paperback on 29 August) and No Other Darkness (to come in Spring 2015). I'm going to be busy...

Meanwhile, isn't the paperback of Someone Else's Skin just gorgeous? I love it.

I'm over at Omnimystery in the US today, talking about how Marnie stalked me until I told her story. Let's hoping she keeps stalking me until I'm done.

Marnie had a walk-on role in an earlier story of mine, and she'd been watching me from the wings ever since. More or less patiently, although I could tell she was starting to wonder when I'd get the hint and write her a whole story. It took me a little longer to find her detective sergeant, but Noah Jake entered the fray and I was all set, more or less. 

I wrote the first draft swiftly, for the sake of the momentum and in case I lost my nerve. It wasn't great but it had a good spine, and I could see where the layers were needed to make it better. I was lucky with my cast of characters. Once I'd picked a women's refuge as the setting, the characters came to me: lost women with stories they were reluctant to tell; survivors. And the less savoury characters, one of whom hung back in the shadows until the second draft, unnerving me. 

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Someone Else's Skin in The Times

Today's editing was improved ten-fold by an excellent review from Marcel Berlins in his Top Summer Crime Books page of The Times. Alongside Stephen King, Tom Robb Smith, John Connolly, Harlan Coben and more, including Maigret-creator, Georges Simenon. Here's what he said:

"A superb debut and an impressive new cop-heroine, modern, passionate and mixed-up. DI Marnie Rome bears the psychological scars of both her parents being knifed to death by a teenager living in their house. She and her sidekick arrive at a women's refuge to conduct a routine interview. They come across one of the residents stabbing the husband from whom she was escaping. Rome investigates, then there's a disturbing disappearance from the refuge. The horror of domestic violence is the thread that runs through the novel, coupled with the failure of the justice system to deal with it."

As I say, the hard task of editing Marnie Rome book two became a lot less onerous after reading that.

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Sherlock, anime, anti-heroes, and Marnie Rome

I'm answering questions over at My Bookish Ways today. Look out for some of my darkest secrets, including how I made Sherlock bleed all over John Watson...

When I found out that Someone Else’s Skin would be published, I phoned up my friend Anna (to whom the book is dedicated) and we screamed like schoolgirls.

The picture is of the US audiobook version, read by Justine Eyre and available from Tantor.

US readers can buy the Penguin paperback here, or in good indie bookshops like Sunriver.


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