Peter James is the author of the new novel They Thought I Was Dead: Sandy's Story. It's the latest in his Detective Superintendent Roy Grace series, and it focuses on Grace's missing wife, Sandy. James is based in the UK.
Q: What inspired you to write They Thought I Was Dead, and why did you decide to tell Sandy’s story?
A: When we first meet Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, he is a senior homicide detective working in Brighton, Sussex, a famous city on the south coast of England that has had a long criminal past.
Back in the 1930s Brighton was known as the Crime Capital of the UK and Murder Capital of Europe. It is a title it has never quite lost, luckily for me!
When we first meet him in Dead Simple, he is coming up to his 39th birthday and we learn that nine years earlier, on his 30th birthday, his wife, Sandy, whom he loved and adored, vanished without trace.
While he has continued to function as a very effective homicide detective, for nine years he has been looking everywhere for her, wondering what happened. Did she run off with a lover? Get abducted and killed by a maniac? Have an accident? Lose her memory? Take her own life somewhere? He has even tried mediums and clairvoyants, without success.
During the course of the next nine novels, as Roy moves on into a new relationship, falling in love again, we gradually learn more and more about Sandy, and the truth of what happened to her... and that perhaps she wasn’t the very perfect wife that Roy idolized…
When I was asked by my publishers, back in 2003, if I would like to create a new fictional detective I thought long and hard about all the homicide detectives I knew, after years of spending time with the police on my earlier novels.
First and foremost, what they do is solve puzzles – every homicide is a huge puzzle of hundreds if not thousands of pieces that have to be painstakingly put together. I thought it would be interesting to create a detective with a personal puzzle of his own he could not solve.
My plan was to set up the mystery of Sandy in the first book, Dead Simple, and resolve it in the second, Looking Good Dead. But when Dead Simple was published, to my surprise and delight it became an instant global hit and suddenly we were inundated with emails and letters from around the world, from readers speculating what might have happened to Sandy. So I thought, hey, I could have some fun and keep the mystery going.
So I did this, seeding in a little bit more about her in each successive Roy Grace novel and my readers seemed to love the increasing intrigue. More and more emails and letters speculating about her came in and I kept it going for 14 books.
But I always think it is important in life to quit while you are ahead, as the saying goes! I remember one email from a fan saying, “Dear Mr James, I’ve just worked out I’m a lot younger than you, and I imagine I’m a lot fitter, which means you are going to die before me. I hope you’ve left the secret of what happened to Sandy safely in your publisher’s vaults.” !!!
And then a very heart-breaking one: “Dear Mr James, I am 89 and the doctors tell me I don’t have very long to live. Please tell me the secret of what happened to Sandy and I promise I will take it to the grave with me.”
I suddenly decided it was time to reveal the truth! Initially I planned to write it as a 100-page novella, simply called “Sandy’s Story,” but as I began to write, I found her increasingly captivating – and I wanted to know more about her myself!
And I realized to do her story justice it needed a full-length novel – and I had such huge fun writing it. And I’m particularly happy with the ending, which will surprise every reader who thinks they know the ending….!
Q: How would you describe the relationship between Sandy and Roy Grace?
A: I am constantly fascinated by the topic of how well we really know someone. It is probably impossible for one person to know absolutely everything about another, even those who have been married a long time. Almost everyone has secrets of some kind or another.
In the early days of their marriage Roy and Sandy were happy, and he admired her, particularly her general companionship and her good taste. It started to become strained when they were unable to conceive a child. Having been through that myself in my first marriage I know the stresses and cracks that can cause.
Then it becomes further strained when Sandy realizes that being married to a homicide detective means that she will always come second to a corpse. His work has to take primacy over everything – family occasions, the lot. Roy doesn’t really see this as clearly as he should.
It becomes even more strained when Sandy befriends Tamzin, who is extremely wealthy – beautiful house, rich husband, all the expensive toys, and she starts to hanker after a better lifestyle. Secretly, she starts gambling. And drinking. And having an affair. She hides it all from Roy very well, but there is a ticking clock that Roy does not see.
Q: Did you know Sandy's story all along, or did much of it come to you as you wrote this novel?
A: I always knew the beats of the story, which I had planned to tell in the second novel in the series when I did the big reveal.
But then when I started working on the novel, and I had room to expand, a lot of fresh ideas, such as her time in Jersey in the Channel Island, came to me for showing all that had happened in those intervening years. It was exciting and a revelation – I felt at times as if she was dictating her story to me!
Q: How have readers reacted to the novel?
A: The reaction from my readers has been just fantastic – even more positive than I had ever dared to hope. Here in the UK is the first place the novel has been published so far and it shot to No 1 on the official UK hardcover bestseller list after just three days on sale!
What has thrilled me more than anything is that I’ve had loads of emails from readers who have never before read a Roy Grace novel, saying how much they’ve enjoyed this and that it is making them want to read the Roy Grace books now. I am so happy about this.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’ve just finished my 20th Roy Grace novel, One Of Us Is Dead, which I’m hugely excited about. People often ask where I get my ideas from and the answer is literally anywhere.
Also, as a novelist, people often say to me, “I have an idea for a book that you are going to want to write!” I probably get told this once every couple of weeks. And sure, it might be an interesting idea, but not one that I think will work – nor one I want to spend a year of my life writing. But with One Of Us Is Dead it was different:
About two years ago the son of an old friend contacted me and said, ‘I’ve got a story that you are going to want to write.” He was very insistent and assured me that when I heard this story, I was going to want to write it.
So I met him for a coffee and he told me the story: A guy he knew, who he described as “a bit dodgy” went to a funeral six months previously. He arrived late at a country church, in pelting rain, and the church was crammed, every seat on every pew taken, so he had to stand at the back.
Halfway through the service, he saw a man sitting six rows in front of him, whom he recognized. He recognized him because he’d been to this man’s funeral two years ago and had given the eulogy!”
The moment I heard this I knew I absolutely had to write this – and this story is essentially the first chapter of One of Us Is Dead.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Well yes, two things – the first being pretty massive… Two weeks ago, Her Majesty Queen Camilla announced in her Royal Reading Room podcast that Detective Superintendent Roy Grace is her favourite fictional detective!
Also Season 4 of Grace will be out on Britbox in the US from July 2 – there are four new episodes of two hours each.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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