When the shocking discovery of a murdered woman’s body disturbs the tranquility of tourist season, the police detective in charge of the puzzling case must work alongside the new filmmaker in town to pursue every lead in the new romantic thriller from New York Times bestselling author Laura Griffin.
We chat with Laura about Midnight Dunes, along with writing, book recommendations and more!
Hi, Laura! We last spoke a year ago. How has the past 12 months been for you?
Busy! I’ve been working and traveling, making up for time lost during the pandemic. It’s wonderful to get back to mostly normal life.
Midnight Dunes is the third installment in your Texas Murder Files series and it’s out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Mysterious murder rocks beach town.
What can readers expect?
Midnight Dunes is about Macey Burns, who moves to Lost Beach after a scandal derails her television career. When a body is discovered in the sand dunes near her house, she gets pulled into the murder investigation by Detective Owen Breda.
Midnight Dunes is a romantic thriller, so the suspense and the romance are woven together into one story.
What was the inspiration behind this particular novel?
The spark of the idea happened when I moved into a house built in the 1940s, which we bought from the estate of an elderly lady who had passed away. My first project was painting a spare bedroom, so I climbed up on a ladder in the closet and discovered all these old postcards from a road trip she had taken in the 1960s. I was fascinated by the idea of all the stories a house holds—about people’s lives and their love affairs. As a suspense writer, I took that idea and gave it a creepy twist—what if you moved into a house and discovered something that made you think a murder had happened there?
Were there any challenges you faced whilst writing?
I love writing series books because you get to bring in favorite characters from previous stories, which is like visiting old friends. Readers tell me they love this, too. The challenge is making sure that new readers don’t feel lost. I always want to make any book in a series a stand-alone experience in the sense that you can pick it up and figure out the relationships and the plot. So all of my series books have a stand-alone suspense plot and focus on a different romantic couple.
Were there any favourite moments or characters you really enjoyed exploring?
The heroine, Macey Burns, is a filmmaker. I had so much fun learning all about documentary filmmaking as I researched her character! Her name was inspired by the award-winning filmmaker Ken Burns after I took an amazing online class from him.
What do you love about writing within the thriller genre?
I love to read a fast-paced story, and that’s what I love about writing thrillers, too. It’s important to keep things moving. In a romantic thriller, if the action slows a bit, then the emotional tension picks up, which keeps everything moving along at a good clip.
What’s next for you?
I’m finishing the last edits for Vanishing Hour, about a woman who moves to West Texas with her search-and-rescue dog and helps investigate a string of disappearances near Big Bend National Park. I love dogs, and it has been so much fun learning about the training and planning behind search-and-rescue work.
Vanishing Hour comes out in October. I’m also working on the next book in the Texas Murder Files series (after Midnight Dunes). It’s called Deep Tide, coming in 2023.
Lastly, do you have any 2022 book recommendations for our readers?
I just started a fun new rom-com set in the publishing world called Book Lovers by Emily Henry. And for suspense fans, I recently finished They All Fall Down by Rachel Howzell Hall, which is about a woman who gets invited to a private island for what she thinks is a reality TV show only to discover that she is trapped in an elaborate murder scheme.
