Jane Casey has an incredibly loyal fanbase. They love her crime novels featuring DS Maeve Kerrigan so much, that they are constantly asking her when the next one is due out. One reader, who bought her latest novel, The Close, at her recent London launch party, read it overnight, and messaged her in the morning, on publication day, saying, ‘when is the new one coming?’
“That’s the quickest ever,” says Jane, laughing, when we meet in Dublin on a dark miserably rainy afternoon. “People take the day off work on publication day to stay at home and read the book. And some readers, when they finish it, start reading from the beginning again.”
This comes as no surprise to this reader. And it’s not just because Jane’s plots are intricate and clever; of all the crime writers I have read, Jane takes the most care with her major, and minor characters. There’s an authenticity to them, and the nuances of the delicate relationships between them are beautifully handled. And none more so than between Maeve, and DI Josh Derwent, her recalcitrant boss.
And in this one, Jane’s tenth Maeve Kerrigan book, she sends the duo to the suburban Jellicoe Close, to live there for a while, and to find out if there’s a connection there to an unsolved crime. They’re to pose as a couple who are dog-sitting. Living in such close proximity, will Maeve finally succumb to Josh’s erotic charms?
Josh poses this as a holiday – but Maeve can’t let go of the murder case she’s currently investigating, of a Hospital Consultant found dead in his car. She’s not sure she can trust her deputy. Is the beautiful, flirty, but frankly hopeless Georgia capable of conducting a thorough investigation?
Maeve soon becomes embroiled in the life of the community, discovering a lot of unhappiness behind the closed doors. And is she imagining things, or is there a dark presence – a possible stalker with wrongdoing on his mind?
It’s a fabulous read – with a sense of menace throughout, but how did Jane get the idea?
“I’ve had the idea since lockdown,” she says. “I struggled with the blurring of the personal and professional life which is a very lockdown thing. I was doing all those zoom events and people were looking at you, but also the background. They were seeing a different side of you. And from that idea, I loved having this closed group of people.”
She loved taking the two protagonists out of their usual setting and giving them permission to try out new ways of doing things.
“It’s an opportunity for Maeve to do the things she normally stops herself from doing. Like being too girly, too pretty, or too attention seeking. She can live a different life and try a different way of being.
“It was a dream to write,” she says. “It’s a happy, sunshiny book, and it came out the way I imagined originally. That is what you want, and it never usually happens.”
Since penning her first book in 2008, Jane has written a total of 15 – including some standalone titles, and three books for teenagers. Before becoming an author, she was an editor in children’s publishing. Just how did she get started?
“I loved my job, but I just felt a need to write stories,” she says. “I had wanted to do it, but I was waiting to be struck by inspiration for a big, maybe literary novel, and I’d had no stories to tell.
“I was on my train journey to work, and I had this story going through my head. I would tune into it and listen to the characters talking to one another. I had plotted the whole thing in my head before I thought, maybe I should write this down.”
Her only ambition, back then, was to find an agent, so she was delighted when The Missing got a deal. Her editor at Ebury asked for a synopsis of her second book of the deal, and when she delivered it, suggested she should instead write the first of a series.
“She said, ‘people don’t remember author names or plots, but they remember the characters.’ And Maeve hasn’t really changed much since her first book, although, obviously, things have happened to her.”
Maeve Kerrigan is a London based Dubliner, a trait she shares with her creator. Jane lives in Southwest London with her barrister husband, two sons and a Show Cocker Spaniel called Rory. But some years ago, the couple tried living back in Dublin. They lasted less than a year.
“It was disastrous! Nothing went our way. For the first time in years, my editor turned down a book I had written. She said, ‘I’m not sure about this,’ and I said, ‘I think I should scrap it and write something else.’”
She’s glad now, saying it was a bad book, but at the time it put financial pressure on the couple.
“We’d planned that my husband would work less, but because my book wasn’t coming out he had to spend the whole time working away. We didn’t have enough money, and the children weren’t particularly happy where they were in school.”
If that was hard, lockdown was arguably harder.
“We were living in a tiny flat we had moved to between houses, and someone moved into the flat above and was renovating. And he was there on his own, and he drilled for four months straight, every day. That was difficult! But I managed to write The Killing Kind in the end. After that I could write anywhere – in a jumbo jet or a ballroom!”
That book became a Richard and Judy Book-club pick, and is being adapted for television, but why, when she had won, and been nominated for numerous awards for her series, did she choose to do another standalone?
“I wanted to write something in the world of the bar,” she says. “I’m interested in how barristers have to consider client’s moral responsibility, and, being in a man’s world constantly, having to deal with difficult men, and with men seeing her as a woman first, and barrister second. And I felt I had more freedom to take the story in the direction I wanted.”
Since then, Jane has suffered the loss, In Dublin, of both of her parents – in December 2020, and December 2021 respectively. How is she doing?
“It’s a long process,” she says, “but the year when my father was on his own was much harder. We spent a lot of time with him, we were able to come and go, but we had all that worry of someone living on their own.
“But he had great carers, and a lot of support from the Gardai. They would ring and check in, and they came to the funeral. I’m so grateful to everyone. There was so much kindness.”
Jane is now settled into a new house – one that came with a writing shed – an unbelievable luxury, she says, after years of writing at the kitchen table. She’s about to finish her next Maeve Kerrigan novel and has plenty of ideas for others.
“I tend to think about a book for a long time before I actually write it,” she says. “I know what the next two books will be about. It’s like choosing a channel – deciding which one I will let run through my head.”
She does still have ambitions. She’d like to write a historical novel based on a real event.
“But one time I tried it, it came out as a saga.”
She would also, love to write a full-on romantic novel.
“But if I do, I will end up killing someone,” she says, ruefully. “It’s inevitable.”
The Close by Jane Casey. Harper Collins: €15.96.
Published in the Irish Examiner on 25th March.
©Suejleonard. 2023.