My recent novels explore the impact of crime on ordinary people. They are not experts, not professionals, not detectives or forensic scientists, career criminals or lawyers or investigative journalists but people like you and me who are suddenly caught up in some horrific tragedy. They are victims and survivors. Their stories are about situations that frighten me and disturb me, the sort of thing that could happen to any one of us but that you never think will happen to you. In The Silence Between Breaths that tragedy is a terrorist attack. The current threat level in the UK is severe, meaning a terrorist attack is highly likely, and in recent weeks we’ve seen the attack at Westminster while others have been thwarted. The book follows nine characters to look at a range of responses to the threat of danger and the experience of trauma. Among those perspectives is that of a member of the terrorist’s family – a viewpoint I’ve heard little about in news and analysis. There are questions to be answered in the writing: how would each character cope, what they would do under such pressure? Questions I’m also asking of myself. When reading about real-life incidents I’ve been struck at how in the most harrowing of circumstances we have such great capacity for humanity and that’s something I’ve tried to capture in the story.
