We chat with author Yasmin Angoe about The Ferryman’s Daughter, which sees the daughter of an infamous murderer gets caught up in a copycat’s sick game in this thriller about legacy, self-determination, and corrosive secrecy from the bestselling author of Not What She Seems.
PLUS you can read an excerpt at the end of the interview!
Hi Yasmin! Tell us a bit about yourself.
Hello! I’m a thriller and psychological suspense author of the Nena Knight thriller trilogy and the standalones, Not What She Seems and Behind These Four Walls. And The Ferryman’s Daughter is my new novel, which is the start of the Bloodlines series. I received the 2020 Eleanor Taylor Bland Award for Emerging Writers of Color and was a Goodreads Choice Award nominee for mystery and thrillers. I love writing multi-layered suspense fiction, rich in family secrets and redemption and explore the human psyche and choices. I also just love entertaining my readers with a good story that will suck them in.
You always keep us guessing, Yasmin. No matter what kind of thriller you decide to write – international espionage, small town domestic thriller, YA horror, or psychological suspense – you put your unique spin on the genre and wow us. What would you say is a string that ties all your novels together?
The thread that ties all of my novels together is having fierce, haunted, and determined female protagonists who aren’t afraid to be vulnerable in soft moments and learn to find their individual power and use it against whatever adversity or antagonist I throw at them. The most interesting thing is figuring out how they’re going to get through their darkest moments by using what they know and what they’ve learned.
In THE FERRYMAN’S DAUGHTER, you dip your toe into police procedural territory, and this may be your darkest – and best — book yet! What intrigued you about writing a thriller about the medical examiner/coroner community?
I guess my thoughts can be very macabre. I wouldn’t dare tell my mother. But I have close friends in law enforcement and admire what they do. I’ve chatted with our local coroner and am in awe by what she and her team does, and the stories they’ve shared. I definitely wanted to try that out…not to be too procedural or process driven but to put my haunted, fierce female protagonist in a very specific world that would stretch her, and me. And I wanted to go really dark with this story. All my stories are dark, but this one I wanted to be especially so. But I think I could go darker. LOL. Maybe the next one.
Your new novel opens with a creepy murder which has all the markings of a ritualist killing. There’s some fascinating mythology and psychology present from the get-go. How did writing THE FERRYMAN’S DAUGHTER stretch you differently from your other domestic thrillers?
Yeah, THE FERRYMAN’S DAUGHTER definitely stretched me because I didn’t want to just go off my imagination of how I think things should go. I had to do research. I had to watch documentaries of past serial killers and people who snapped. I went to the coroner’s office and toured and got a feel of what happens on a call, though it’s always different. Spoke to my cop friends and asked about investigative practices and scenarios where a serial killer might be involved. So, it was a lot of learning before I could write (Kind of like what I did before starting Her Name Is Knight—I had to research fighting techniques and stuff about assassins— not that there is a lot, right?) So, when I finished writing THE FERRYMAN’S DAUGHTER, I sent it to my investigator friend to read and tell me if the detectives and their processes were plausible and sounded realistic. He gave me a go, and I went! It was a laborious but rewarding process in the end.
What was the biggest research rabbit hole you fell into while writing this novel?
Ahhh, I think researching serial killers, watching the documentaries done about them. Reading up on them. And then figuring out my serial killer and their psychology and belief system. What drives them to kill, what do they believe they’re doing verses what they are actually doing. And what might life be like if you knew your parent was one, and no one knew.
You got your start as a novelist by writing the internationally bestselling Nena Knight Series, but your last three novels have been stand-alone thrillers. With THE FERRYMAN’S DAUGHTER, you’re returning to writing a series, and this novel is Book One in the new Bloodlines Series. What do you like about writing series versus stand-alone novels?
What I like about writing a series verses standalone is the opportunity to continue work in that world I’ve established. I know the characters. I can stretch out their overall goal (what they want the most) to happen by the end of the series. I can dig into their stories and add new context. But it’s also difficult because each book needs to be new and fresh, not repeating the same things that happened in the previous books. You have to be careful about that. Standalones allow for me to cleanse my palate and have a quicker story with characters I love, but won’t have to get as deeply invested in. I like writing both. But I’ll only write a series if I feel I have a longer story to tell there.
Your scenes are so dynamic and cinematic – it’s like watching a nail-biting film as you read! How do you do it?
Well, the scenes play out for me in my head, how I want the characters to act, move, look. Their expressions as they are going through that moment. I think about that particular scene repeatedly until it feels right. Then, as I’m writing, it starts to take a shape of its own. I always want the action scenes to be impactful and hard-hitting, and I will admit that I have acted out some scenes in my office—just to make sure what I’m thinking can be done and makes sense. I’ve done that ever since Her Name Is Knight and even had my kid hold me at gunpoint (it was her finger) to see if my character could fight her way out of that moment. She, and I, could. Or maybe my kid was just scared of me. LOL.
Can you give us any hints on what to expect for Book Two in the Bloodlines Series?
Ha! More darkness. I think Sanaa, my protagonist, will have an even more formidable opponent who forces her to look internally and ask herself if she is truly her father, The Ferryman’s, daughter and…and we can guess what that might mean for her. Will she submit to his legacy? Even I don’t know fully yet. It’ll come to me at the most inopportune moment.
EXCERPT
Prologue
November 30
Sanaa sat in the tiny, cold room under the lights, one of which was nearing its end. A paper cup half filled with dark liquid and the red-and-white can of Coke sitting next to it were the only items that accompanied her in this room. Before her was a one-way mirror, and her reflection stared back at her. She looked sleepless.
Tucked into the corner of the ceiling was a black camera. The red light flashing, indicating it was recording.
Her hands still trembled, and she fought hard to make them stop. To push down any feelings so no one could read her. This time, her nails were no longer dirty. Her shirt wasn’t stained with blood. Her nose, still swollen from the elbow it had taken, stung. It was hard to breathe through, even cleaned of all the crusted blood and snot. She wanted to blow it, but that would probably hurt more than she was willing to endure. Her eyes were dry and itchy. Her head throbbed, less from the blows it had taken and more from the truths that had cracked open. She was tired. She hadn’t slept and didn’t know when she would again.
She could hear faint movement from the other side of the closed door. Saw shadows flit past the door as people walked by. There was a wave of muted noise. People. Many of them. The media. Reporters staked out outside, waiting for a piece of her. The sound of them rose from the parking lot to the small window, which cast a dim light from the dark-gray clouds gathering.
A deep rumble sounded, long and rolling. When she was really young, like five or six, she’d been afraid of coming storms. Her father would hold her and tell her how she could count between thunder and lightning to know how far the storm was from her, and then she wouldn’t be as scared anymore because she knew where the storm was.
“Better to face your fears,” her father had whispered in her ear as she clutched her covers tightly to herself. “Get yourself ready and face them head-on.”
The memory was bittersweet. She could almost see her father’s spirit flickering in the corner of the room, watching them with cold observation, as if this were one of the observational studies where he studied people like specimens in an attempt to draw his conclusions.
It was the click that snapped her back to attention. It sounded like a sledgehammer. Her heartbeat quickened. The door opened, and the detective—one of the ones she didn’t know, maybe because of conflict of interest—entered the room with a manila folder, a pen, and something that could pass for a smile.
He put his things on the table across from her and looked at her with a mix of suspicion, pity, and curiosity. Yes, there would be a lot of those feelings from now on.
He said, “Six people have died. One is critically wounded. Whether the count will bump up to seven or not is up to fate.”
She didn’t react.
“Dr. Voss—”
“I heard you. And it’s Karrem. Ms.” She sounded alien, her voice coming out too loud in this cramped, cold room.
He cleared his throat. “Ms. Karrem,” he corrected as he sat in front of her, trying to look casual so he wouldn’t come across as intimidating. He actually sounded regretful and looked pained. “You’re not on the hook here. Just want you to know that.”
Aren’t I? she almost said.
She gave him a wry smile. She knew better.
“This is simply an interview we’re having. A conversation.”
She nodded slowly. Dr. Voss. She hadn’t heard that name in . . . since that night. And now she couldn’t escape it.
Because, as evidenced by the detective’s slip of the tongue, the world outside knew who she was now. It would no longer see her as Sanaa, the high school forensic science teacher, eagerly showing her students how to read crime scenes. No longer Sanaa, head of the science department, who had a lovely old lady as a neighbor, joked with the local kids, and tried diligently to live a quiet life as she anticipated marrying her fiancé. She had tried so hard to separate herself from her youth and the skeletons that filled the closets. The world would know her now as the Ferryman’s daughter.
Now, she was the evidence and a piece of the puzzle. She was all of it.
The proof that the mythological Ferryman had been real.
The confirmation that his legacy lived on.
The sin of the father that she would have to atone for.
The world would ask itself, just as this detective was while trying hard to look impartial, Is she a victim or the heir?
Had she inherited his darkness?
Did she have a monster within?
It was the question of the decade.
