Last summer, Alice Ogilvie’s basketball-star boyfriend Steve dumped her. Fans of One of Us Is Lying and Riverdale can’t miss this page-turning who-done-it that’s sure to be the next must read Young Adult thriller! Who killed Brooke Donovan? It’s the biggest mystery of the summer, and everyone in Castle Cove thinks it’s the wrong guy. Now, tell me, Liz, what is the story of our book? And what better way to bring these two together than have Iris assigned as Alice’s tutor after Alice returns to school, fresh off house-arrest? (You’ll have to read the book if you want to learn more about that!) We needed an opposites-attract dynamic and I think we found it in our pair of unlikely teen detectives. Iris Adams is reclusive (though she does have friends, The Zoners, a group of smart and geeky outcasts, who we both enjoyed writing), secretive, somewhat shy, and hiding her own secrets from the world, and from Alice. It seemed natural that her partner would have to be someone from entirely different circumstances, socio-economically and personality-wise. Kathleen: Alice Ogilvie and Iris Adams….what a pair! I love that you came up with Alice first: a privileged, smart, headstrong girl. How did you start building her character? I wrote Alice’s POV and you wrote our other POV character, Iris Adams. It was fun to use that as a jumping off point to create Alice Ogilvie’s backstory. When we started chatting about writing together, we realized that we were both fascinated by the disappearance of Agatha Christie some hundred years ago. Writing this was like getting another taste of that freedom. One of the things that I didn’t realize before my debut came out, is how different it is to write under contract. We did not have a book deal, we didn’t tell our agents or editor (we share an editor, which is how we met in real life). Another very cool thing is that…we wrote this book in secret. We chatted about writing, we gradually found our plot, our characters, we kept things easy and engaging and it was a joy to sit with another writer (even though we are in different time zones) and be able to share a story in real time. One of the things I loved most about writing this book with you was how organic it was. Kathleen: I read a lot of Nancy Drew growing up, too, and then gravitated toward true crime, like In Cold Blood and quite a few other books that were very dark stories about very dark things. We started chatting about how we wanted to write something fun… something that would give readers a break from the stresses of the world, and a mystery felt like just the thing. At the beginning of 2020 when lockdown started, writing another sad book felt overwhelming. Liz: Hello, Kathleen! I’d say, we chose each other, wouldn’t you? I’ve loved mysteries since I was a little girl, and grew up reading all sorts of cozies, from Agatha Christie to Nancy Drew to the Hardy Boys series. Kathleen: Liz, tell me why you wanted to write a mystery and more importantly, why on earth would you choose me as your co-writer?
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