Ordinary life is endlessly fascinating, from the quiet hum of a communal meeting place to the clink of teacups in a village cafe or the ice cream van on a sleepy suburban street. These moments are so familiarly innocuous that we rarely stop to wonder what might lurk beneath them.
And that’s where the story begins.
As a crime and mystery writer, I find the most chilling tales don’t begin with bloodshed or bodies — they start with routine. With predictable lives, bordering on tedious, until something unravels. A misstep. A secret. A person who doesn’t quite belong. Or, in my book, The Girl In Flat Three, a smell that won’t go away. Suddenly, the cosy becomes claustrophobic. The familiar feels foreign. And the ordinary becomes the stage for something much darker.
This genre is sometimes called domestic noir, but isn’t it more appropriately named as the sinister ordinary? A genre that encourages the reader to look closer — to examine the kind neighbour, the spotless home, the polite hotel guest. To question the noises coming from the flat above? These aren’t gothic castles or abandoned warehouses. They are places we inhabit. And that’s what makes them dangerous.
Real suspense begins not in the extraordinary but in the almost possible. In the idea that the person who checks your fire alarms might plant something more lethal. That the inoffensive man in the supermarket queue isn’t browsing so much as stalking. It’s that sliver of doubt, once introduced, that swiftly spreads its tentacles.
I read and write in that moment — identifying the split second when everything shifts. A once locked door left ajar, a misplaced object that shouldn’t be there. A silence that lasts a little too long.
We live in a world built on habits and expectations. Most days follow a script. But it’s in the unscripted where that stories take shape.
So pay attention next time you’re in a hotel or walking down a familiar street. Notice the shadows. Watch for the hesitation in someone’s smile. The sinister doesn’t always arrive with a mask and knife held aloft. Sometimes, it wears a name badge and offers to change your towels.
The Devil comes to Bylands – Book Three in The Denman & Tallis Cotswold Crime Series coming later this year.
I’m often asked where the inspiration for my books comes from, and it’s not difficult to answer. The antics of my ancestors inspire me. Other people have illustrious forebears. Mine are mad, bad and often dangerous to know. My family tree has over fifty-five thousand individuals, and it’s still growing, so there’s plenty to go at.
Around the time that I discovered my relationship (through marriage) to Mary Cage, I also found several suffragists in my family tree. They were peaceful activists, and their absence from the 1911 census suggests that they were at the census evasion night in The Old Museum, Ipswich organised by prominent Suffolk suffragette Constance Andrews. Both stories fascinated me, and inspired my first adult fiction novel. Naturally, my protagonist in Vote for Murder is a suffragist, and her story weaves together with that of Mary’s to produce a murder mystery set in Victorian and Edwardian Suffolk.
I couldn’t resist using this story as the starting point for the first of my Lawrence Harpham mystery novels, 
Faith Mills was a victim of witchcraft accusations from the Suffolk Witch Trials of the 1640s. She was one of the unfortunate women executed on the strength of allegations made by Matthew Hopkins and his Suffolk born colleague, John Stearne. The two men arrived in Fressingfield during the Witch Hunts and stoked up fear of the supernatural in the hope of personal gain. This genuine terror of witchcraft escalated in an atmosphere influenced by religion, politics and the civil war. The victims were mostly, though not always, women and they were exploited by Hopkins and Stearne who deliberately targeted the poor, vulnerable, marginalised or different.
In terms of dogs, the year started badly. My beloved border terrier passed away in his fifteenth year while I was in Suffolk – but this is not a sad tale. Toby had a happy life on the edge of the Cotswolds with more lovely walks than you can shake a stick at and a family who loved him. Though he hated most dogs (it’s a terrier thing), he developed a strong bond with a miniature schnauzer called Benson. They became ‘The Cone Brothers’ when coincidentally injured in the same week and made to wear the cones of shame.
Jacqueline Beard Writer 