Hello my name is B.P. Walter and I'm the author of A Version of the Truth. It's
a psychological thriller about a mother who is preparing a family dinner
party when her teenage son comes to her and says I found something on Dad's
Dropbox account on the iPad and I think it's something really terrible. And
the book then flashes back to 1990 in Oxford and shows how this terrible
secret at the heart of this woman's marriage is linked up with the terrible
experiences with a young girl at Oxford University. Okay I'm here today amidst
the shelves of Waterstones Piccadilly, the largest bookshop in Europe, and I'm gonna
start off in the general fiction section with an author who probably straddles
the genre between crime fiction and general fiction and that is Donna Tartt
with her famous novel, her debut novel, The Secret History. This book has probably
influence my writing beyond any other. It's a mystery that tells you from
the start what happens and then proceeds to go in minute detail across a very
upsetting murder case that happens amidst a group of students at university.
And the book I wrote is partly a University campus novel and I feel
Donna Tartt really gets that electric intoxifying atmosphere of a group of
students studying something that they really care about and becoming very
close to each other. And steadily it all spirals out of control.
I myself discovered this book at university. I had a housemate who sat and
read all of Donna Tartt's novels on the grass during a heatwave, one after the
other. And I was really interested as to what was gripping her so much and
she said start with this one and your life will never be the same again. And
she was completely right. I read it and I have been a Donna Tartt fan ever since.
It is extraordinary. Okay we now move round to the crime section for my next
choice which is A Judgement in Stone by Ruth Rendell which was published in 1978.
This is a very interesting book because it is technically what's known
as an inverted detective story even though there isn't very much of a
detective in it. And it has some similarity to Donna Tartt's The Secret
History where we're told more or less at the start who dies and who kills them. And
this book is probably best known for having one of the best opening lines
or indeed opening paragraphs in the whole of crime fiction which I'll read
you now: 'Eunice Parchment killed the Coverdale family because she could not
read or write. There was no real motive and no premeditation. No money was gained
and no security. As a result of her crime Eunice Parchment's disability was made
known not to a mere family or a handful of villagers, but to the whole country.'
And right from the start you instantly want to know why she did this and what caused
her to commit such a terrible crime against a whole family simply because of
her illiteracy. And Ruth Rendell I think was the master of the domestic thriller
genre even before it became very big and explosive with books like Gone Girl and
The Girl on the Train. She was doing it back in the 1970s and this is
such a short novel but extremely powerful. And for my next book we've come
around into the children's section actually, and it might seem like a bit of
an odd one out, out of the rest the books have chosen, but I'll explain why it isn't.
This is Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling of course, the fourth book
in her very famous series. I've chosen this book because not only was it one of
my favourites as a child, it is also I believe one of the greatest crime
mysteries or detective mysteries ever written. And I think if you reread it, if
you've read it already with that in mind, you get a completely different
experience. And it's all there, all the clues, all the detection. I mean, to be honest,
nearly all the Harry Potter novels are detective mysteries but this one I think
in particular. I mean this one really stands out because towards the end, and I
won't give it away for those who haven't yet encountered the joy of the Wizarding
World, but a very terrible thing happens, a very violent incident is witnessed by
Harry and I think it shows one of the most realistic and truly heart-rending
portrayals of trauma and trauma from witnessing violence that I've read on
the page and the ending particularly has always stayed with me. So I think out
of the whole of the Potter series this one is probably the absolute best. And to
finish up we head back to the crime section with a very recent novel,
actually this came out in 2018 and it was the first book I read last year and
it remained throughout the whole year probably the best book I read. And it's
called The Innocent Wife by debut author Amy Lloyd who won the Daily Mail search
for a bestseller competition. And I'm not at all surprised this book
won because it is absolutely stunning. It's one of the psychological thrillers
I've read ,at least for the past few years, that has truly stayed in my memory.
And it's about a young British woman who becomes involved with a prisoner on
death row, she starts by writing to him and then goes to visit him. And then when
they manage to get his conviction overturned she starts a life with him.
And as the book goes on we realise that there are really serious questions being
raised about his potential innocence or guilt and as she gets deeper and deeper
into this relationship and her life with him she really starts to think, was this
a wise decision? And it's really interesting actually
because with the recent explosion of lots of different documentaries on
Netflix and on the BBC to do with true crime and the podcast Serial – at the same
time, his case is being followed by a camera crew documenting his release. So
we get that added extra true-crime aspect to it as well.
So yeah, if you're looking for a recent psychological thriller, The Innocent Wife
is absolutely sublime.