About the Author:

My sister - who is a fiction editor for a large UK publishing house and therefore can’t be dismissed as knowing nothing about titles - told me the other day that she ‘wasn’t sure about’ the title of the novel I’m about to start writing.  I always think of my titles well in advance, because they’re usually integral to the concept of the book, and the one I’m about to start is called A Room Swept White.  Or rather, that’s what I think it’s going to be called, depending on whether my sister succeeds in talking me out of it or not.  It’s a quote from a poem by a British poet called Fiona Sampson, a poem that is all about women in cells, shut away from the world.  The phrase ‘a room swept white’ in particular is a metaphor for ‘the empty self’, the self that has emptied itself of, and freed itself from, the outside world.  As soon as I read it, I knew I wanted it as a title - indeed, it seemed meant to be.  The novel is a psychological thriller about three women who have been released from prison after having their convictions overturned - the women all face a new start, free of guilt and blame (one way in which the title is relevant).  All three women have had their lives shattered and everything they care about taken away from them by prison (another way in which the title is relevant), and then, after their release, somebody starts killing them, one by one (a third way in which the title is relevant - a room swept white could be a metaphor for death.  Oh, okay, I know that’s stretching it, but I’m the author, and if I say that’s a hidden layer of meaning then it jolly well is!)  Anyway, you get the idea - this novel and the title A Room Swept White are destined to be together.  And then along comes my sister and says she doesn’t like it.  Or rather, she likes it, but it sounds, she says, like the title of a literary novel.  It sounds like a slim volume that might be shortlisted for a prize.  I don’t write that sort of book - I write commercial crime novels.  She tells me I need to think about my middle-England average reader, who might find the title confusing.  I believe the word ‘pretentious’ was also mentioned.  What, after all, is ‘a room swept white’?  Does it correspond with anything recognisable from the real world?  Everyone knows what a white room is, but what about the ’swept’ - isn’t that just too weird?  Can one really sweep a room white?

I defended my title vigorously.  No, one can’t sweep a room white (unless one has white paint on the bristles of one’s broom) but who ever said metaphor wasn’t allowed?  Plus, I believe those words conjur up a strong visual image - of a stark, empty white room, yes, but more than that - of a room that has had its former contents violently swept away.  The fact that it’s a slightly unusual, intriguing phrase is, I argued, a good thing.  I’m hoping the book will be an unusual, intriguing psychological thriller.  I remembered, while my sister and I were doggedly contradicting one another, having similar arguments with all sorts of people about the title of my second crime novel, Hurting Distance, the one Soho Press has just published.  ‘But what is hurting distance?’ people asked.  ‘Read the book,’ I said.  ‘It’s all in there - a full and frank explanation of the title’s relevance.’  That novel is all about the worst kinds of danger and betrayal being close to home - only the people you really care about can hurt you really badly, because they’re within…you’ve guessed it: hurting distance.  Now, three years after I wrote the book, I’m so glad I stuck to my guns and called it Hurting Distance rather than something more obvious.

I don’t think you necessarily need to understand a title in order for it to work.  It merely needs to attract readers to the book, and sometimes something slightly mysterious can act like a magnet.  I remember when I first came across An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears; I thought ‘I must read that - I have to know what an instance of the fingerpost is’.  The mystery of the title drew me to the book.  Also, how many crime novels are called something that is so obvious, it’s really boring?  ‘Kill Murder Death Dead’, etc?  I made a vow early in my crime-writing career that I would avoid any obvious death words in my titles.  I think there are people who would see ‘Kill Murder Death Dead’ and think ‘That’s just a  cliched thriller’, but they wouldn’t think that about A Dark-adapted Eye (by Barbara Vine - one of my all-time favourite crime novels) or about An Instance of the Fingerpost - or, I would argue, about A Room Swept White.

A lot of my readers who email me say that they don’t usually read crime, that they didn’t think they liked mystery fiction until they discovered my books.  Titles that aren’t quite so obviously crime-ish are more likely to draw in readers who imagine that genre fiction is not for them.  Good crime fiction is for everyone, of course - it’s the best kind of fiction there is, and surely there’s nobody who wouldn’t think so if they read the right crime masterpiece, but because people have prejudices and preconceived ideas, it’s important for some crime writers not to give their books titles that will make a whole lot of potential readers think, ‘oh, it’s just another cliched crime novel - I needn’t bother with it.’

My third psychological thriller is called The Point of Rescue - it starts with the bodies of a mother and a daughter being found in two bathtubs full of water.  Should I have called it Bloodbath?  That’s a question I’m certainly not going to ask my sister, for fear of what she might say!