The Story Behind Low Reach: Where It Began

People often ask where the idea for a book comes from, and the honest answer is that it’s rarely one thing.

With Low Reach, it began with a feeling. Not a plot. Not even a character. Just a feeling.

I had this image in my mind of three sisters returning to the family holiday cottage on the Devon coast after the death of their father. A place tied up in childhood memories, old routines, and all the things families leave unsaid. I knew straight away that I didn’t want it to be a big sprawling story. I wanted it contained. A single weekend. One setting. A handful of people. Pressure building quietly in the background.

That interested me. Because when you strip life back like that — take away distractions, put people in close quarters, and force them to sit with each other — truth has a habit of surfacing.

And truth, in thrillers, is rarely tidy. At its heart, Low Reach was always about family. Not the idealised version. The real version. The complicated one. The version where love and resentment can sit side by side. Where loyalty can become a burden. Where people carry things for years because speaking them aloud would change everything.

The three sisters — Claire, Lena and Evie — came to me quite clearly. Claire was the eldest. The one who holds everything together. Organised, capable, dependable… until the cracks start to show. Lena was different. Rougher around the edges. The outsider in her own family in many ways. Angry in places, wounded in others. And Evie, the youngest, perhaps the most underestimated. On the surface, the easiest to read. But of course, surfaces can be deceptive.

That dynamic fascinated me from the start because birth order, family roles, and old wounds shape people in ways they don’t always understand themselves. I wanted them to feel real. Not heroic. Not perfect. Just human.

The setting mattered enormously too. Devon felt like the natural home for this story. I know the coastline well, and there’s something about it that lends itself beautifully to suspense. The cliffs, the sea, the weather changing in minutes, the isolation once darkness falls. It’s beautiful, but beauty can be unsettling too. That contrast felt right. A picturesque place holding ugly truths. The cottage itself became almost another character. A place filled with memory. Familiar enough to feel safe, but old enough to hold secrets.

And that’s really what Low Reach became about. Secrets. What we keep. What we bury. And what happens when those things refuse to stay buried.

There are dark themes in the book, and writing some of those scenes was difficult. Not because they were hard to imagine, but because they needed honesty. If you’re writing about trauma, manipulation, guilt, or family damage, you owe it to the reader to treat those things truthfully. Not sensationally. Truthfully.

For me, suspense only works if the emotional stakes are stronger than the plot mechanics. A twist is fine. Tension is important. But if the reader doesn’t care about the people at the centre of it, none of it matters. That was always the goal with Low Reach. To write something tense, yes. But also something emotional. Something recognisable. Something that makes readers ask themselves what they would do in the same position.

One thing that surprised me while writing it was how much the characters took over. That sounds like a cliché, but it’s true. There were moments where the story shifted because a character simply wouldn’t behave the way I’d planned. That’s usually a good sign. It means they’ve become real enough to resist you.

Looking back now, Low Reach feels like a story about consequences. About the long shadow of silence. About how the things we protect can sometimes be the things that damage us most. It’s dark in places, uncomfortable in places, but at its core it’s still about love. Not romantic love, necessarily. Family love. The fierce, complicated kind. The kind that can save you. Or destroy you. And perhaps both at the same time.

If you’ve already read Low Reach, thank you. And if you haven’t, but you enjoy psychological suspense rooted in family, secrets and consequence, I hope you’ll take a look.

Neil.