The Poison Tree: the addictive , twisty debut psychological thriller from the million-copy bestselling author

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I’ve used the word formula and while there are certain conventions the genre has to follow – peril, mystery, misdirection and reveals - I don’t believe thrillers have to be formulaic. If you read a lot of psychological thrillers they can get a bit suburban and samey, so I try to keep my books fresh by writing about things I haven’t seen done before: for example, the plot and structure of He Said/She Said revolves around total eclipses of the sun, amongst other things. It kept me interested and offered something new for my readers. What do they do? These two stupids decide to be murderers officially and devise a plan to kill Carl himself. Is any part of this novel autobiographical, or is it wholly imagined? Would you say that you were—or are—more like Karen or Biba? I liked Paul, I loved his story and I'd have actually preferred the book if it was just a more detailed story of him. He was engaging and honest and I really felt for him in his plight. It could have been expanded on so more and I felt let down by that. So we come to the present. Knowing just that Paul is treated as a witness and not as an accomplice to the murder, which murder you ask, yes, I'll get to that. And he'll be getting sent to some place in the meantime until the Trial starts, and that place is where Louisa works, and also hides herself from the world.

Meanwhile, we hear the story of Paul, whose parents are darling. Paul witnesses a horrible accident early on that changes who he is and the dynamic of his family. Thrust into an unfamiliar environment he is taken under the wing of the illiterate Daniel who serves as his protector from bullies, but at quite a social cost. Karen was a bit of a square at University specialising in languages for which she has a special gift. Her life was dull and safe until she met Biba a bohemian drama student whom she adored and whose lifestyle she coveted and adopted for one special summer. i hope not. i hope secret history is every bit as good as i remember it, and the haters are the same people who hate anything that falls into that "ambitious without being highbrow" category. if it wasn't good, why would there be so many people trying to imitate it? In the present, Rex and Karen try to make a life together on the outside. Karen has passed off Alice, Biba’s baby, as her and Rex’s daughter for ten years and doesn’t wish to tell Rex the truth now. He continues to believe that Alice is his daughter. Karen, meanwhile, is receiving mysterious phone calls from someone who just hangs up, and she is paranoid that the press will find out who Rex is and begin to hound them again. Rex has changed his name to get away from his past, and all they want is to live a normal life. We caught up with Erin to talk about writing and reading psychological thrillers as well as what it was like filming a creative writing course during a pandemic...The Skeleton Key was published in 2022 and it included references to a song that was created by Ben Walker, Kirsty Merryn& violinist Basia Bartz to accompany the book. [5] Bibliography [ edit ]

I would classify this novel as a mystery/romance as the main drive of the novel was in finding out the central mysteries of the characters, namely what Daniel had done to cause Paul to have to testify, and why exactly Louisa is afraid of being spotted in certain areas of London. This book would also be good for those that like a character-driven plot. in the spectrum of "books that claim to be just like secret history" this one takes home high marks. The Poison Tree is a bit of a change in direction for you - why did you decide to go from big Hollywood films to a relatively small British TV drama? Louisa became this possessive girlfriend, where the idea of Adam cheating on her haunted her dreams. And that's fair, but she should have known what kinda guy Adam was before getting into all of this. I mean, he WAS seeing a girl when she met him, remember? He dumped that girl for Louisa, who's to say he won't dump her for someone else? there are many wonderfully tiny details that please the reader, and it is a fairly satisfying, if a little too convenient, mystery/suspense novel.it is always nice to have two characters whose every wrong turn is so darn obvious, and you can only shake your head and say, "oh no - don't do that!!!" if only it were so obvious in real life...I have always been drawn to characters on the cusp of adulthood, students in particular, because it's such an intense, irresponsible time of life. Our minds and bodies are adult, we are no longer under the care of our parents, not yet burdened by careers, mortgages, or children. Relationships and living arrangements tend to be quite fluid, with friendships forged and abandoned almost weekly, and the same goes for lovers; these fluctuations and transitions mean that life is brimming with potential for fun, sex, experience and the dark side of these things too, heartbreak, betrayal, death. Since turning thirty a few years ago I've come to realize just how small a window of irresponsibility those student years are, which makes it seem, in retrospect, even more intense.