The plot

When I started my creative writing course at the University of East Anglia, I planned to write a serial killer story based in Perth. I wanted to capture that sense of an invisible threat hiding in plain sight that had stayed with me for more than two decades since the 1990s and early 2000s, during and after the Claremont murders and the subsequent police investigation. But once the perpetrator was charged, and later convicted in September 2020, I no longer wanted to write that story. I wanted to write fiction, not something based on real events.

After my debut was published, I returned to the idea of writing a serial killer story set in the place I’d grown up. Could I use that same sense of lurking threat but turn it on its head? I wanted to write a serial killer plot that didn’t centre on the perpetrator, but instead on two young women affected differently by a series of murders in their neighbourhood. Most of all, I wanted to take this particular example of male violence, the serial killer, and have my two young protagonists try to strip him of his power.