Photo Credit: Nina Subin
Michele Campbell, best-selling author of It’s Always The Husband and She Was The Quiet One, has an exciting new thriller that’s just days away from release! A Stranger On The Beach is an edgy and unforgettable tale of obsession and revenge. It will be available for sale on July 23rd, but it already seems to be on everyone’s must-read list!
Michele generously gave us some of her time and answered our questions about her background and writing inspirations, and she let us in on what character type tends to reappear in her books, as well as what she has coming next!
Hi Michele! Could you tell us a little about yourself?
I’m originally from Connecticut and have mostly lived in New York and New England, which is why my books are set in the northeast. But I love to travel, and I’ve been all over the world, so you’ll also find great vacation destinations in my books. (Like the trip to Jamaica in It’s Always the Husband). I was a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn before becoming an author. So, although my books explore the dark side of personal relationships from a character-driven perspective, they also include crimes and police investigations. I’m happily married, and my husband has never tried to kill me (as far as I know). I’m a mom of two boys.
Growing up, what were some of your favorite books?
The book I read over and over again as a kid was The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare. It’s an atmospheric YA historical romance set in Connecticut in the late 17th Century, about an independent young woman trying to survive in Puritan society who gets accused of witchcraft. It was a Newbery medalist in its day and is still widely read. I picked it up at the school book fair, fell in love and began a long tradition of rereading favorite books endlessly.
Was “writer” on your list of “Things I Want to Be When I Grow Up” or did that happen later?
I always loved to read and to write. I wrote fiction as a kid. (Haha — none of it survives, and if it did, I’d be mortified.) In high school, I worked on the school newspaper and wanted to be a journalist. In college, I fell in love with the idea of justice and decided to go to law school. Lawyers write all the time, so that career was great training for becoming a crime novelist.
You graduated from Harvard, you went to Stanford Law School, and ultimately worked as a federal prosecutor – what was the process of moving from that career into being a crime novelist?
I started writing fiction seriously when I was home with small children. (I know I’m not the only female author with that origin story.) I had been a trial lawyer, but had difficulty making that very intense career fit with motherhood. I think that speaks to how unfriendly the modern workplace is for moms of young kids. Being a writer gives one greater flexibility. I left my prosecutor job with a head full of great crime stories, so it was a natural evolution to start writing crime fiction.
On a purely-for-pleasure reading day, what are some books and authors that you reach for?
As you can imagine, I read a lot of thrillers. Favorite thriller authors include: Ruth Ware, Shari LaPena, Tess Gerritsen, Rea Frey, Mary Kubica, Kaira Rouda, Jessica Strawser and so many more that I can’t list them all. I also love fantasy and historical romance. My favorite all-time series are Outlander by Diana Gabaldon and A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin. I reread those and watch the t.v. adaptations. Deborah Harkness’s A Discovery of Witches series is a recent discovery and a new favorite. For classics, I return always to Edith Wharton and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Their thematic preoccupation with wealth, class and status has influenced me greatly, and shows up in every one of my books.
If you had the opportunity to meet and talk with an author from the past, who would you choose and why?
I’m tempted to say Patricia Highsmith, because she writes the most psychologically acute thrillers of all time, and I find her utterly fascinating. But she was such a misanthrope that I suspect holding a conversation with her would be a challenge. Instead, I’d choose among the great literary wits, because they’d be fun to talk to—Dorothy Parker, Oscar Wilde, Truman Capote or the like.
How has your writing process changed since your first book?
I’m now on a deadline!
Where did your inspiration for A Stranger on the Beach come from?
A Stranger on the Beach is a sleek, propulsive story of obsessive love, told in alternating he said/she said chapters, in which one or both of the narrators is unreliable. Caroline is a wealthy housewife who first sees Aidan, the local bartender, standing on the beach outside her Hamptons mansion. When she discovers that her husband has been cheating, she has a brief revenge fling with Aidan that means nothing to her and everything to him. In her point of view, Aidan is a dangerous stalker. In his, they’re in love, and he’s protecting her from her dangerous husband. When the husband goes missing, who’s telling the truth? The book is very cinematic and takes inspiration from films like Body Heat and Fatal Attraction as well as psychological thrillers like Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley.
Without spoilers (obviously) do you have a favorite part, character, or aspect of A Stranger on the Beach?
Aidan is my favorite character in A Stranger on the Beach. He’s wounded and damaged. He tries to do the right thing, but he can’t help acting in ways that are bad for him and for others. Despite the trouble he causes, I empathize with him profoundly. All of my books have a character like that. In She Was the Quiet One, it’s Bel, the wild, rebellious twin who hazes her sister. In It’s Always the Husband, it’s Kate, the bad girl with the world at her feet. Some readers hate Kate, but I don’t. I love all of my characters, because I understand them.
I’m sure it’s blasphemous to even ask, but do you have a favorite of your books? Or one that is just a little closer to your heart, maybe?
A mother loves her children equally, but at the moment I’m a little crazy for A Stranger on the Beach. It’s a tale of infatuation and obsession so powerful that it nearly drives the characters mad. It also has a great he said/she said structure that keeps readers guessing from beginning to end. But I also love my first two books; they’re my babies, too! It’s Always the Husband follows three women who meet as college roommates and form a toxic friendship that turns to tragedy later in life when one of them is murdered. And She Was the Quiet One is a gothic murder mystery about twin sisters set at a remote boarding school.
I loved A Stranger on the Beach so much that I have jumped right in to your back list, but I’m dying to know what’s next!?
My fourth book, The Wife Who Knew Too Much, is coming summer 2020. Inspired partly by that great classic of psychological suspense, Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca, it’s the story of a waitress from small-town New Hampshire whose first love comes back to her years later. It would be a dream come true, except he’s married — to a difficult, controlling, uber-wealthy woman who then dies in an apparent suicide. Our heroine goes to live with her love in his mansion by the sea. As she’s drawn deeper into the dark glamour of a life she’s ill-prepared for, it becomes clear to her that what a wife knows can kill her.
Be sure to add A Stranger On The Beach on Goodreads and it is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers as of July 23rd 2019.
