DIVE a totally gripping, breathlessly twisty crime mystery

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Refreshingly, we also see the story through the eyes of Naomi, a highly skilled officer who is new to the job.

He studied for an MA in Dramaturgy and Script Development at University of Exeter and is an alumni of Curtis Brown Creative. There is a lot of technical detail and jargon about the marine police which added an authenticity but went over my head a bit. When you know you’ve written the best book you’re capable of, and people still don’t like it – that can take some getting used to.The agreement was for Dive to be published in any format in the English language (as opposed to world-all rights, an important distinction I have since learned). NINE TO FIVE is a new short produced by collaborators from BFI NETWORK x BAFTA Crew 2020/21 with added material improvised by the cast. It felt like the perfect setting for a thriller, and an opportunity to explore perspectives I’d not seen in crime fiction before. A consumer is denied the chance to purchase the product because the supplier is gatekeeping the process. The book is written in the third person throughout so we see the police perspectives as well as the criminals.

The revised date was moved a second time, when later that summer (July 2022), I was sent a cover image that resembled a psychological thriller. Repetition and repartee meant I overheard some of these horrors, and eventually, they’d include me from the other side of the bar. Dive is a novel inextricably tied to mental health in men, seen through the eyes of the male character. Frogman David Cade usually passes the bodies on but his new colleague Naomi Harding wants to pursue the deaths.That mix of science fiction and science fact and fast-paced action just ticked the boxes for me at that time in my life. A briefcase is discovered in the same stretch of water, and suddenly the higher-ups at CID, including Naomi’s rival, Detective Chief Inspector Shannon Baines, start showing an interest. When his daughter disappears and bodies surface in the river matching her description, workaholic diver David Cade and disgraced detective Naomi Harding join forces to uncover a sinister crime that will change the course of everything. I’d disclosed in some detail what my preoccupations were when writing the book, and the demographic I hoped to reach. Dive’ was a screenplay before it became a novel, and had to rely on the tropes of the crime thriller in a very specific context.