Blurb
It seems too good to be true…
When struggling writer Sebastian finds a room to let in a palatial Hampstead residence he cannot believe his luck. The rent is ridiculously cheap and he immediately feels a connection with his beautiful widowed landlady, Adriana.
It is.
Things take a dark turn when he finds out what happened to the last lodger. Could this be why the house is a fortress of security, and why Adriana seems so fragile? Adriana doesn’t want to talk about the death and sadness that seem to follow her wherever she goes and Sebastian has secrets of his own.
Now someone is watching their every move and there is nowhere to hide.
This house of light becomes a dark nightmare as the threat ramps up – what does the watcher want? And how far will they go to get it?
A gripping, twisty thriller perfect for fans of B.A. Paris, Shari Lapena and Lucy Foley. If you were hooked by Netflix series You or The Watcher then you will love this.
About the Author
A.A. Chaudhuri is a former City lawyer, turned thriller writer, who lives in Surrey with her family.
Once a highly ranked British junior tennis player, competing in the national championships and a member of the national squad, she went on to tour the women’s professional satellite circuit as a teenager and achieved a world ranking of 650.
After returning to full-time education, she gained a BA Honours 2:1 in History at University College London, and a commendation in both the Graduate Diploma in Law and Legal Practice Course at the London College of Law, before training as a solicitor at City firm Norton Rose and then practising as a commercial litigator at two other City firms, Kendall Freeman and Travers Smith.
She left law in 2008 to pursue her passion for writing and in 2010 passed the NCTJ fast-track newspaper journalism course, for which she was awarded The Oxford University Press Public Affairs Award for the most outstanding public affairs central government paper.
In 2013 and 2014 she self-published two women’s fiction novels under the name Alexandra Sage: Love & Limoncello and the sequel Love & Loss. Love & Limoncello has sold more than ten thousand copies to date, reaching number 53 in the Amazon Kindle Bestsellers List in October 2014.
More recently, A.A. Chaudhuri’s name has become synonymous with best-selling psychological thrillers; The Scribe and The Abduction, were published by Lume Books in 2019, while She’s Mine, The Loyal Friend, The Final Party and Under Her Roof were all published by Hera. Alex’s fifth psychological thriller will be published next June.
The Scribe was republished as The Lawyer by Joffe Books on 7th October. The Abduction is also being republished with a new title by Joffe in Spring 2025.
You can read much more about A.A. Chaudhuri by visiting her website at https://aachaudhuri.com
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Introduction
BH: Thank you for looking in on my blog. Today I am chatting to A.A. Chaudhuri, who I have wanted to meet since reading her brilliant psychological thriller, Under Her Roof. So without further ado…
Hello! Firstly, may I call you Alex for the purpose of our chat?
AAC: Of course!
BH: Great, thank you. So, Alex, congratulations on the success of your writing career to date. I’m excited to chat to you, after following you on social media, and having read and enjoyed two of your novels this summer; The Final Party, which was brilliant, and your most recent, Under Her Roof, which I found dark, gripping, and very sinister. I thought the concept was highly original: without giving too much away, what can readers expect from Under Her Roof – and what inspired it?
AAC: Thank you, Beverley, it’s been lovely connecting with you on social media, and it’s so kind of you to invite me for a chat on your brilliant blog. I’m so thrilled you enjoyed my books; it means such a lot coming from a fellow psychological thriller writer. So, in Under Her Roof, struggling writer, Sebastian, rents a room in the palatial Hampstead mansion of troubled, mysterious widow, Adriana Wentworth, despite his misgivings centring on her strange rules and the fact that the last lodger died in tragic circumstances. Things soon take an ominous turn for Sebastian when he realises that both he and his landlady are being watched, and that the terrifying situation he finds himself in may be linked to Adriana’s troubled past which she’s reluctant to talk about, and which may explain why she keeps the house like a fortress. From early on, I make it clear to my reader that both are hiding dark secrets. Secrets that haunt them. We don’t know what those secrets are initially, of course, but we know from experiencing their inner turmoil, shame and guilt through the first-person narrative that they can’t be good!
I’m so glad you found it original, Beverley. One of the things that makes psychological thrillers so compelling (other than the essential components we expect like high tension and a flawed narrator), is the fact that they focus on ordinary people in everyday situations and relationships we can all relate to, but which necessarily take a darker turn, being thrillers! Thus far, I have written about motherhood, friendship, women at the gym and with my next book I wanted to take another common set up most of us will have had experience of, this being the Landlord-tenant relationship, but which I don’t think has been explored quite so much in this genre. The majority of us will have been tenants at some point in our lives, some of us even Landlords, but it occurred to me that this scenario had the potential to take a particularly dark turn as invariably, each party will be a stranger to the other, knowing little about the other person or what they might be hiding, with the exception of what they might find out on the internet. Of course, secrets often play a focal role in psychological thrillers as they are intriguing and tend to relate to the darker side of human nature. I wanted to marry this set-up with the idea of Big Brother ‘watching’ us, the fact that we live in an era where we freely expose our lives to strangers on social media, making us vulnerable, and the potential prey of dangerous stalkers. The latter is something that terrifies me, as I am sure it does most people and so I thought it would be intriguing to weave this into a Landlord/Tenant story and the sheer feeling of helplessness, claustrophobia and terror it can induce. In terms of setting and why I chose to base the novel in Hampstead, having lived in the North West London area for over decade, it’s an area I know well, but one in which I could never in my wildest dreams afford to live in. I remember taking long winter walks around Hampstead Heath as a student, marvelling at the area’s mansions with their imposing gates, and then in later years pushing my son around in his buggy with my NCT friends. It’s a very picturesque, affluent part of London, where a person should feel incredibly safe. But of course, this is not the case for my two main characters – Sebastian and Adriana – and therein lies the dramatic irony I wanted to convey!
BH: Earlier in your career, you wrote romance – which requires a very difference skill set. Do you see yourself returning to the genre at any point?
AAC: Not for the moment, although never say never! I did enjoy writing the romance novels – I enjoy reading them too (!) – and Sophie Kinsella was a huge inspiration for me when I was younger. I loved her Shopaholic series and found her books so joyful, funny and heartwarming. However, for now I want to focus on my thrillers. For me, thrillers are both exciting and challenging. They are a challenge for us, as authors, in the sense of having to create a ‘puzzle’ for our readers to solve, and a challenge for our readers in trying to solve that puzzle. If I’ve done my job correctly, throwing in enough red herrings, twists and turns, they won’t solve the puzzle I create, and it’s always so satisfying when a reader messages me to say they got it completely wrong or were kept guessing until the end! I love the intrigue of thrillers, and with my psychological thrillers what I especially love is exploring the mindsets and motivations of my key protagonists, i.e., what’s driving them to do the things they do and/or take a dark path. A path we are all, as fallible human beings, susceptible to, which I think is what makes this genre so compelling for readers, and for me. That ‘close to the bone’ feeling, the idea that ‘it could happen to me’ is quite thrilling and that’s why readers feel so invested in the story and its characters as they can picture themselves in the scenario being played out. I also enjoy the methodical process of writing thrillers, and I suppose my time as a lawyer has helped me with this, in the sense that I had to plan out the stages of a case, to try and outsmart the other side as best I could, while having exceptional attention to detail.
BH: Alex, without spilling too many secrets, what are you currently working on and when will it publish?
AAC: My fifth psychological thriller with Hera is coming out next June, and I have recently sent back my structural edits which is a great relief! Once again, it’s quite different from previous books – I always try to do something different with each book, in terms of the storyline and structure. Set against the backdrop of a primary school in Kingston-Upon-Thames, it centres on the murder of single mother, Lola, whose body is found on the riverbank the morning after a parent Christmas social. Suspicion soon falls on Lola’s mum friends, but it’s also clear that someone dangerous from Lola’s past may have wanted her dead and that a friend Lola confides in on-line might have the answers. The story is told through the eyes of the investigating police officer and from Lola’s perspective in a series of flashbacks starting from when her son, Luca, joined the school up until her death. Like all my books, it’s pretty dark and twisty, with a few shocks along the way!
The first book in my Kramer/Carver thriller series, The Scribe, has also recently been re-published by Joffe Books with a new cover and title – The Lawyer. It features feisty lawyer, Maddy Kramer, and the surly yet charismatic DCI Jake Carver who team up to hunt down a ruthless serial killer who’s butchering female lawyers according to a pattern corresponding with the legal syllabus at Maddy’s old law school. The sequel, The Abduction, will be coming out with a new title and cover in the spring of next year which is also very exciting!
BH: How exciting! I love the sound of your murdered single mum thriller – it’s right up my street. Which brings me to ask, assuming you read thrillers yourself, who are your favourite authors, and what is your current read? Do you have an all-time favourite novel?
AAC: Yes, loads, and I wish I had the time to read more! I love B.A. Paris, Gillian Flynn and Lisa Jewell. John Grisham was my initial inspiration for thriller writing having read A Time to Kill and The Firm in my early teens. I love A Time to Kill because it’s such a gripping page-turner while exploring some very important and profound issues. It’s more emotionally intense than some of Grisham’s other novels I would say. Gone Girl remains my favourite psychological thriller and was a real inspiration for me in terms of becoming hooked on this genre. I’ve recently finished two dark and twisty psychological thrillers – Follow the Butterfly by Marrta Kaukonen and Patient X by Naomi Williams. They are total mind-spinners, flawlessly written, with amazing twists!
BH: Alex, your CV is outrageously impressive. Not only are you a high achiever, but also the diversity of your pursuits is fascinating. At first glance, competition tennis, the law and fiction writing don’t appear to have much in common, but would you say there’s any crossover? Am thinking that your experience in law is useful as a crime writer?
AAC: That’s very kind of you to say. And yes, I’ve certainly had plenty of diverse life experience, all of which has hopefully helped me to become a better writer! There’s definitely a crossover between all three in terms of the mindset you need to adopt to try and make it and survive, i.e. resilience, determination, and a thick skin! A huge amount of discipline, diligence, hard work and tenacity is needed for all three pursuits, which are hardcore, cutthroat industries. You need to be able to take the rough with the smooth and manage all kinds of obstacles and often some very difficult characters! There’s no question that my time in law helped me to focus and knuckle down to my writing. It also helped with the editing process in that, as a lawyer, I developed good attention to detail, having spent many long hours proof-reading exceptionally long documents! Although in the end law wasn’t creative enough for me and I found a lot of the work dull and repetitive, it helped me to develop a methodical mindset which is certainly useful when it comes to writing crime fiction.
BH: Returning to your tennis career for a moment, do you still play? How about in the garden with your sons – do you let them win?
AAC: Rarely, I must admit. By the time I gave up at 19, I felt truly burnt out. Tennis was my life for 13 years; everything took a back seat to life on the court, and I genuinely didn’t have the urge to play anymore. Having said that, I did play with some of my law firm colleagues back when I was a lawyer, and have of course played with my sons in the local park. My husband too! And in terms of letting them win, therein lies the problem in that I can’t let someone win, even my own sons! It sounds awful I know! The competitive streak in me is too ingrained. The other thing is, because I can’t play to the standard I once did when I was training four hours a day, I get very frustrated with myself when I miss shots that would have been second nature back then, meaning I would rather not play at all!
BH: Alex, what three pieces of advice would you give fiction writers who are just beginning their journey?
AAC: I don’t think I can distil it to three, can I say more?! If so, I would firstly say become a writer because it makes you happy and you can’t imagine doing anything else! Rejection is inevitable in this industry – overnight successes are few and far between – so you really have to LOVE writing and must never stop believing in yourself else the turndowns will break your spirit. If you have talent and work hard, you will get there. You may not become a Sunday Times bestseller but you will get published, and people will eventually read your books, which is the greatest feeling, as is the first time you get to hold your published novel. Writing is a highly subjective business, and you need a thick skin to cope with the inevitable rejections, setbacks and criticism you will encounter along the way. It’s important to surround yourself with people who believe in you, as well as you believing in yourself. I’d also say focus on perfecting your craft and write what comes naturally to you, rather than writing what you think is on trend. It has to come from the heart, rather than a forced process readers will see through and therefore leave you open to criticism. Make sure you read widely too, as you can learn so much from other writers, and be inspired by them. It’s also a good idea to be active on social media, not just as a means of connecting with the reading and writing community, but because it’s an invaluable way of getting your name and work out there. And wherever and whenever you choose to write, it’s important to cut out distractions, to get the nuts and bolts of your book down, then go back and refine! The most important thing is having a basis you can work off, with the finessing coming in the second and third draft.
BH: Sound advice, Alex, particularly your point about growing a thick skin.
Well, thank you so much for taking the time to chat to me. Goodness knows how you juggle your writing and editing commitments with family life. I wish you every success with your current and future books.
For more information, you can visit A.A. Chaudhuri’s amazon page at https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/author/B07SJFJ721/
Or follow her on social media :
X / Twitter: @AAChaudhuri
Facebook: www.facebook.com/aachaudhuri
Instagram: @a.a.chaudhuri
