The germ of an idea that became LIES originated in a conversation with my wife, as we drove to Brittany for our summer holiday. We had been on the road since 2am, and were chatting to keep each other awake, when she related a story about some friends raising money for charity in memory of a colleague who had died. They had kept the colleague’s Facebook profile ‘alive’ to help publicise their efforts. That got me thinking: what if you did something similar to cover up a crime? To mislead the police? To frame an innocent man?

It was a lightbulb moment and I wrote a plot outline there and then. Six pages of notes later, I looked up and realised we had overshot our motorway junction by about 20 miles. I was so distracted by the idea that I’d completely lost track of where we were. My failings as navigator that afternoon added a couple of hours to the journey, as we went cross-country to pick up our route again, but Joe’s story was already taking shape.

I love the idea of a single spur-of-the-moment decision that has terrifying consequences. I also knew LIES would be about love, trust, obsession and betrayal – whether we can ever really know those closest to us, when technology has given us more ways to deceive each other than ever before. Don’t get me wrong, technology has also changed the way we live in lots of great ways, and helps us to have friendships that might never have happened a few years ago. But haven’t you ever secretly wondered who your nearest and dearest is really talking to, messaging, texting, tweeting, when they’re transfixed by their mobile phone? Of course you have…

My next thriller, EVERY GOOD DEED, is about a woman whose instinctive act of bravery leads to her receiving an unthinkable offer in return. A way to solve an impossible situation with her intolerable boss. A once-in-a-lifetime chance that could turn her life around and make all her problems disappear. But who dares to make a deal with the devil? Because EVERY GOOD DEED must be balanced out with its opposite…