The Essence of Evil is the first book in the DI Dani Stephens crime series, and I hope you’ve enjoyed the first glimpse into her dark and troubled world, and feel sufficiently invested in her, like I do, to read more!!

I hope you enjoyed The Essence of Evil, and I’m always grateful for reviews if you could spare a few minutes to write and post one online.

If you’ve followed my writing career to date, you’ll know that until now, I’ve very much concentrated on writing action based thrillers with embattled heroes, but I’ve long been fascinated by police and crime thrillers too, both in book and in TV/film, and a couple of years ago I put myself to the challenge of writing one. I mean, why not?!

Dani Stephens as a character came to me in something of a random brain wave, and I really can’t pinpoint now what sparked her creation. I do know that I quickly decided that she was a character I wanted to put some serious effort into. Even within my action thrillers, I’ve always enjoyed writing strong female characters, and I knew that with Dani I just had to give her the leading role. With her dark back story, it was clear to me that this first book should be all about exploring what it is that makes someone a killer.

But how to go about writing a police procedural when I’ve zero experience of murder investigations, save for reading a few detective books and watching Line of Duty?! First port of call was an eye-opening meeting with the Homicide team at West Midlands Police, where they walked me through the ins and outs of a typical murder investigation – typical from the point of view of procedure at least.

Of course, I wasn’t interested in writing about a ‘typical’ murder, so I’ve also spent many an hour online researching some pretty horrific crimes of years gone by, carried out by some of the most notorious serial killers we know of. Not a procedure for the faint of heart, and my internet searches must look seriously suspicious right now!

You’ll also notice the setting of this book is entirely within and around Birmingham – a far cry from my previous globetrotting thrillers which often span multiple continents! I currently live in Sutton Coldfield, and both my kids were born here, and my current home town features fleetingly in this book. All of the locales referred to in The Essence of Evil are real places that I’m familiar with (to varying degrees, and quite a few road names are made up!), and if you’re wondering about Dani, she actually lives in my old apartment by the canals near Brindleyplace!

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