The Diary of a Debut | 2nd and 3rd January 2011

In which I ponder whether Before I Go to Sleep really is a crime novel

Hopes and Doubts — The Diary of a Debut

My first book, Before I Go to Sleep, first came out in April 2011. Until this morning, I’d completely forgotten that in the January of that year I’d decided to start keeping a journal to chronicle things as they happened.

My entries were sporadic, and some intensely personal. But, on rediscovering them this morning, I was transported back to that time, a time of hope and fear and uncertainty and excitement.

I thought my reader-supporters might enjoy them, so I’m going to share them here, bit by bit.

My first glimpse of the final jacket design, emailed to me on 6th January 2011

Sunday January 2nd, 2011

A good day. Took Lola¹ to the park. Carol there, with Rosie². Afterwards we hired a Streetcar and, in three journeys, shifted all the stuff we had in storage to the new flat. It felt good to be moving things over there, another way in which this weird new chapter feels like it’s becoming real.

This evening I watched a remake of Agatha Christie’s ‘The Mirror Crack’d’. I remember reading this at least twice as a child, and being impressed. I particularly liked the twist - the fact that for most of the book the reader is desperately trying to work out who wanted to murder the actress, only to have Christie reveal that the person who died was in fact the intended victim all along. Seeing it again, particularly in the context of my invite to the Harrogate Crime festival later this year (held in the hotel in which Christie reappeared after her 10 day disappearance) did make me think about my place as a ‘crime writer’.

I’m not really sure that Before I Go to Sleep is a crime novel. Or certainly not a conventional one at least. Crime novels typically have a violent act (usually, though not necessarily, murder) in the first few pages, and the rest of the book is concerned with working out the identity of the perpetrator, or else how to stop them doing it again. There’s a detective figure (policeman, investigator, forensic scientist) and often a cast of possible criminals with plausible motives. Christie, in the (admittedly very few) books of hers that I’ve read, certainly seems to play to this formula.

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