For fans of Rachel Hawkins with a salacious reality show edge, Then Things Went Dark follows a cast of hot-headed contestants competing to prove themselves to an audience of millions…but with eyes following you everywhere, how can you hide your motive to kill?
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Bea Fitzgerald’s Then Things Went Dark, which is out August 27th 2024.
The first episode is waiting…are you ready to watch?
No murder has ever had more witnesses…
Six people land on a desert island ready to make their reality show debut. The contestants are suitably glamorous and dramatic – and they’re also hungry to prove themselves. The stakes are high and with millions of viewers watching, losing is not an option. But three weeks and eighteen episodes later, five of the six contestants sit in a Portuguese police station, and none of them are winners.
Because twelve million people were watching when Rhys Sutton died on camera, and someone must pay for the crime.
The best friend, the rival, the girlfriend, the lover, and the sworn enemy are left standing. And of course, no-one is talking. But how do you keep secrets when the world has been watching? Especially when, just a day before his murder, Rhys was the most hated man on television.
All most people want is to be remembered. Oh, no one admits it, of course. But remembrance is everything people strive for. Every dream and desire. Who hasn’t scratched their initials into a desk just to make a mark upon some small piece of the world? What is a longing for love if not the desire to know your life had impact? That you were a single red strand in someone else’s gray life.
Well, I don’t want to be remembered. Remembrance implies reflection. I want to be immediate, to be fleeting and now. I want to control a room, to command a single second of time and to be gone the moment it’s over.
The mark of any good show is that you cannot remember it, no matter how much you yearn to. That from the very second the curtains close the whole thing slips through your fingers like grains of sand until all you’re left with, if you’re lucky, is the feeling. You should be struck by the sense that something incredible is gone. No matter how much happiness it brings you, any good performance should be tinged with loss.
What differentiates icons— true icons— from celebrities is that they are not simply a person of renown; they’re a moment, an impression, a fixed point of creation.
When I’m gone I don’t want to be a memory. I want to be a feeling that lingers long after my bones are gone from this world. I want to have impact. I want to be impact.
— RHYS SUTTON, AUDITION TAPE, ICONIC
***
“Can i smoke in here? ” kalpana asks, already pulling a cigarette from a hemp case and fumbling a lighter in her shaking hands.
“This is a police station, ma’am,” the taller officer says, standing behind a chair he now leans against.
“Yeah, in Portugal,” Kalpana says. “You have a bunch of weird laws about these things.”
The officer takes a breath. “No—you cannot smoke in here.”
Kalpana narrows her eyes before slipping the self- rolled cigarette back into its case. “All right, can we make this quick then? We haven’t even started yet, and I already need a break.”
“A man is dead,” the shorter officer says, voice quiet, but with the sort of edge that cuts most witnesses. For Kalpana, it barely registers.
“Yeah— because he was an idiot. It was an accident, wasn’t it?” she asks, fingers twitching on the table without a cigarette to keep them steady.
“Well, that’s what we are here to find out.”
Isko’s head rests in his hands, or rather his hands cover his face— it’s difficult to tell which.
“I’m sorry,” the taller officer says. Isko isn’t sure whether they failed to say their names or if he’d just been sobbing through their introductions, but he catches a French accent, then clocks that this is no local investigation. Though, of course, why would it be?
“No, no, I’m sorry—I just…I will be together soon… I just…to see a thing like that, I— ” his voice catches and he dissolves into tears again. “I can’t believe it. Which is ridic-ulous, I suppose. It almost feels like nothing else could have happened.”
The detectives share a look, the shorter man’s laced with a contempt that he doesn’t bother to mask as he turns back to Isko. “What do you mean by that?”
Isko looks up through watery eyes, dazed and disori-ented, like he is shocked to find himself there, with these men. It is as though he does not remember leaving the island, like a part of him is still clawing at the beach, begging it to give back all that it took. “Do you know what happens when you put people like us together— people with so much passion it bleeds? So much desperate need to be something, to do something, to become something? Do you know what happens when you put us all in a house in the middle of a deserted island?”
There is a pause as both detectives weigh their options.
“No, I’m not sure that I do,” the tall detective says carefully, rounding his words around the edges of his disdain as if he can mask it altogether.
“Something like this happens,” Isko says so intently it sounds almost profound. “We are people who live for our passion. Is it any surprise that we might die for it too?”
***
Jerome regards the detectives calmly, his gaze level, his back straight. But his hands clench and unclench on the cup in front of him, so tightly that the plastic strains.
“You have to catch whoever did this. And quickly, if you don’t mind.”
The smaller detective— still tall, six foot at least but a full head shorter than the other— levels Jerome with a glare every bit as harsh as the cameras ever were. “I had no idea you were in such a rush, Mr. Frances. With a few days left on that island, my understanding was that your schedule had just opened up.”
“You haven’t given us our phones back, but it doesn’t take a genius to imagine the way we’re all being dragged through the mud right now. I have investors to think of, share prices to— ”
“And you think someone did this?” the detective inter-rupts. “That’s what you said, yes, catch whoever did this? You think this was intentional.”
“I’m not sure Interpol usually gets involved with accidents. You clearly have reason to suspect foul play.”
he detectives do not, in fact, suspect foul play. But the internet does, so here they are, making a show of investigat-ing. An easy case to close, to file away, to forget about.
“The circumstances were unusual,” the tall detective says. “And the profile considerable. But it might not be a case at all. It could very well be an accident.”
Jerome is not quite quick enough to mask his disbelief— or perhaps it’s intentional. Perhaps it’s altogether fake.
“But you don’t think it was an accident, Mr. Frances?”
He does not even hesitate before it bursts from him in a rehearsed stream. “I think everyone in that house was a psychopath. You have no idea what it was like being stuck with them— always harping on about the most absurd things, so self- indulgent and pseudo- intellectual. So I’ll answer your questions and I’ll help with whatever you need because they are horrible, pretentious people who couldn’t admit to themselves that they were base, fame- hungry assholes.”
“I— ”
“And they would absolutely kill to win.”
***
“Now, Miss Yaxley- Carter— ” the shorter detective starts, and Araminta chafes at his accent: British, home counties even— someone who should definitely know who the hell she is and treat her far, far better than this.
“I’m not saying anything until my lawyer comes,” she hisses, resisting the urge to kick at the table. She cannot believe she is here in this dark room with its cold metal chairs and bolts where handcuffs can be latched.
“We have been in touch with your family,” the British detec-tive says. It is a simultaneous thing: her despair and her relief. For all that she has done, all that she has fought for, here she is once again, cushioned and comforted by the protection the Yaxley- Carter name— and its money— affords. “Your lawyer is on her way.”
“Then I’ll see you both when she arrives.”
“That’s perfectly fine,” he says. “We’re more than happy to wait.”
She nods tersely.
“So you studied sculpture?” the taller detective asks with genuine interest.
“My lawyer,” Araminta growls through gritted teeth.
***
Theo looks up as the detectives enter. They look exhausted— far more tired than when they’d first introduced themselves.
“Mr. Newman,” the taller detective says. He’s French, straight from Interpol— Detective Inspector Cloutier, he thinks, though he can’t be sure. The introductions were so rushed, and any voice that hadn’t been on an island with them for the last few weeks was like a new language. “Can you please confirm for the tape whether you want your lawyer present? Your management have been quite insistent; they’ve even sent— ”
“No,” Theo says. “It’s fine. Is there an update? Are you still planning on keeping us here?”
“We’re not keeping you here, Mr. Newman; we just have a few questions,” says Detective Inspector Kennard, the British one—though he’s from Interpol too. Which means he’s here to pin a murder on someone. The detective steps forward, not waiting for his reply.
“How would you describe your relationship with the deceased?”
“With Rhys?”
“Is there another deceased contestant we should be aware of?” Kennard grumbles.
“Yes,” Cloutier speaks over him. “How would you describe your relationship with Rhys Sutton?”
Theo shakes his head, utterly lost. “God, that’s the question, isn’t it?”
