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Recently,I spoke with Frenchabout her particularly eerie brand of red herrings.
I wanted to try and see a murder mystery from that perspective.
What would that do to his ability to empathize with other peoples experience of life?
How would that affect not only his experience of reality, but his perception of himself within reality?
A few boys were out messing about in the woods and found her skull.
And even today, nobody knows who she was or how she got there.
Do you consider yourself a lucky person?In a vast number of ways, absolutely.
I had a pretty happy, loved childhood.
They have to be exaggerating.
Thats one reason why I didnt want to write Toby as a bad guy.
Those people are out there theres a solid minority of people who are just jerks.
He is definitely somebody whos doing his best at almost every point in the book.
Hes not at any point or at almost any point trying to do damage.
Hes constantly trying to protect whats left of his identity from what feels like another assault on it.
I dont think I would consider him at any point a bad person.
But I cant really think about any of my narrators as bad people.
I dont know exactly how it seeped into this book.
And hes flailing, really, for a place in the world, a place in reality.
The idea that hes a victim is somehow the most horrific to him.
Did you ever consider the idea that Toby would actually be the murderer?Definitely I did.
But that didnt seem to fit.
He wouldve been a different person throughout the book if that was part of who he was.
Where do you think Toby ends up at the end of the book?
What is his irrevocable change?[Laughs.]
I dont think its a good place Toby goes at the end of the book!
He hits that crossroad fairly late in the book, and theres no coming back from it.
By the end of the book, theres very little left of him.
Its like he almost doesnt really want to put himself back together and forge a life anymore.
I have never known what Im doing more than a few pages ahead.
So I know that the book Ive just started work on now is not Murder Squad.
But beyond that, I have absolutely no idea.
Its hard to imagine I wouldnt come back to it.
Im assuming I will.
Of all your narrators, do you have one that you relate to the most?Not really.
To me, the whole point is to have narrators who arent like me in any way.
But who Id most like to have a pint with is probably Cassie out ofThe Likeness.
Were not very much alike on the most fundamental level.
I think, though, the one Im fondest of is always going to be Rob fromIn the Woods.
It was my first book.
Practically nobody even knew I was writing it.
I hadnt sold it, I had no reason to believe that anybody would ever read it.
It was just me and Rob and my computer, and the chance that someday this might be something.
I was a desperately broke actor and it was a crazy thing to do.
I was turning down work so that finish this book.
Yeah, Im really attached to Rob.
Speaking of Rob, I wanted to ask you about the ending toIn the Woods.
It was positioned as a murder mystery, which was a good call.
I dont have any problems with that.
And people feel cheated if you dont.
Personally, I think its quite wrong to depend on the contracts involved in the genre.
Is he ever going to mend that damage that was done all that time ago?
And of course, that question does get answered, although probably not in the happiest possible way.
But it does get answered.
In that sense, it does fulfill the complete arc.
Do you know what happened to him and his friends?Definitely.
Not in every single detail, but yes.
Is there anything youd be willing to reveal?No!
Do you still think youll ever return to his story?I dont know.
A part of me would love to.
So it would have to be something that was big enough to be worth writing a book about.
But Id love to come up with something like that.
