Louise Candlish
Credit: Neil Spence
Sunday Times bestselling author Louise Candlish is the author of 16 novels, including her brand-new thriller The Only Suspect, set in 1995 and described by the Daily Mail as 'a perfect mix of nostalgia and menace'. It is published in hardback, ebook and audio in February 2023. Louise's #1 bestseller Our House won the British Book Awards 2019 Crime & Thriller Book of the Year and is now a smash-hit 4-part ITV drama starring Martin Compston, Tuppence Middleton and Rupert Penry-Jones (view the full series on ITVX). International bestseller The Other Passenger, a noir tale of adultery and double crossing set among the Thames river commuters, was Louise's first Richard & Judy Book Club pick and was longlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award 2021. It is now in development for the screen.
We had a great chat with Louise, finding out how she manages to be quite so prolific with her output, how older crime novels can help with ideas and why she enlists her husband's help when researching. Plus we talk about how mobile phones and the internet ruined so many potential crime stories and whether getting a huge advance as a debut author is necessarily a good thing.