I Know What You've Done by Dorothy Koomson

My own copies of 2004’s The Chocolate Run, 2007’s Marshmallows for Breakfast and 2010’s The Ice Cream Girls (which was later adapted and broadcast on ITV) are well thumbed, pages yellowed and stiff with age. Her books have passed down from mothers to daughters (in my case), across book clubs (including Richard and Judy’s) and have exhausted the use of many library slips.

Her career has spanned decades, straddling different genres, from romcoms to weepies to domestic and emotional thrillers. I Know What You’ve Done is the latest book from one of Britain’s best-known suspense authors. But the reality is, people have more expectations of you.” “ I just thought, oh, that would be a good idea for a book!” “People want you to say that it gets easier. And what if they witnessed terrible, dark things? And what if they wrote it all down in a notebook? And then what if they were left for dead? The premise came together in Dorothy’s head in a snap. What if someone’s house placement on the street gave them the gift of being some kind neighbourhood deity? All seeing, all knowing. “ I was sick in bed one day, and I was looking out the window, and I realised I could see everything, everywhere.” Included in “everywhere” was the inside of her neighbour’s houses. It’s also how the plot for her latest novel, I Know What You’ve Done, came to her. A story can bloom from the smallest interactions, the most everyday mundanities. It seems to be in her blood, in the air around her. Such is Dorothy’s familiarity with storytelling. It’s a recent nugget, but it’s not an unusual occurrence. It’s a gloomy June evening, but she’s laughing at the memory on our video call.

He came back later, bewildered, and exasperated.

“ That character is the killer,'' she said to him, insistent, confident. It was through listening to his evangelising debriefs that the show’s answer opened to her, stepped out and declared itself, as clear as a bell. She tells me about a time when her husband talking to her about a murder mystery, one of the many that have graced our screens in the last few years. Dorothy Koomson doesn’t need to watch a show to know who the killer is.

I Know What You've Done by Dorothy Koomson