Next SH: I am putting the finishing touches to my next psychological thriller, “Kind of Cruel,” and working on an outline for a TV series. In my head, I am also working on ideas for a self-help/popular psychology book for embarrassed British people, called ‘How to protect your physical and psychological boundaries without looking like an idiot in public’.
JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?
SH: Two things really surprised me while I was writing “The Cradle in the Grave.” After all the research I did into the real-life cases of Clark, Cannings and Patel, I ended up none the wiser as to their respective guilt or innocence. I wasn’t even able to make a guess, in any of the three cases. There was plenty of evidence to support whatever story a person might want to tell. That was a little scary. Also, I found that I had sympathy for everyone involved. Doctors who send innocent women to prison for the murders of their babies don’t do it because they’re evil. They do it mistakenly, because they genuinely want to protect and defend children. And women who smother their babies don’t do it because they’re wicked, but rather because they’re desperate and ill. If society was more compassionate and less harshly judgmental, more people could admit to the mistakes they’d made and there would be fewer unsolved mysteries.
JG: What would you be doing if you weren’t a writer?
SH: I would either be a country singer in the style of Emmylou Harris or Nanci Griffith, or else I would be a psychotherapist – a bossy one, who would get cross if patients didn’t promise to leave their unsuitable partners and tell their controlling parents to get stuffed immediately.
For more on “The Cradle in the Grave,” visit the Penguin Press website.
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