My life in books: Jane Casey

1.     The Missing (Ebury 2010)

My first published book, the book that kicked off my writing career and changed my life. It’s about a girl whose brother disappeared when she was a child. She gets involved with a murder investigation that solves the mystery about her brother too. I was determined to finish it. I got up at five every morning to write before work – and I am not a morning person!

2.     The Burning (Ebury 2010)

This is the first Maeve Kerrigan novel, about a serial killer who burns his victims’ bodies once they’re dead. I didn’t imagine that I would still be writing about Maeve ten years later, but I’ve never wanted to stop! I started writing this when I was pregnant with my first child and finished it when he was six months old. I’ve no idea how I managed to write it. He never slept.

3.     The Stranger You Know (Ebury 2013)

One of my favourite books in the Maeve Kerrigan series, this book is the one where Maeve and her boss Josh Derwent move beyond arguing and suspicion to something approaching trust and affection, after he becomes a suspect in a murder investigation. It won the Mary Higgins Clarke Award in the US. It’s the one I always recommend to new readers because I wouldn’t change a word of it.

4.     Cruel Acts (HarperCollins 2019)

The eighth Maeve Kerrigan novel and the second to win an Irish Book Award has one of my most popular scenes in it (involving washing-up liquid, and you’ll have to read it to find out what made readers go weak at the knees!). It was great fun to write. A serial killer gets out of jail because of a juror’s mistake, but getting him back behind bars seems impossible.

5.     The Cutting Place (HarperCollins 2020)

My most recent book involves a missing journalist, a gentlemen’s club where there are no gentlemen, and Maeve’s personal life taking a dangerous turn. The novel focuses on a lot of big themes, from coercion and sexism to sexual assault. It’s a book about privilege and the consequences of lying, and I’m told it’s my best one yet! 

In The Cutting Place, DS Maeve Kerrigan finds herself in an unfamiliar world of wealth, luxury and ruthless behaviour when she investigates the murder of a young journalist, Paige Hargreaves. Paige was working on a story about the Chiron Club, a private society for the richest and most privileged men in London. Then she disappeared. It's clear to Maeve that the members have many secrets. But Maeve is hiding secrets of her own – even from her partner DI Josh Derwent. Will she uncover the truth about Paige’s death? Or will time run out for Maeve first? 

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