Lily Anderson has it all. A beautiful son, a wealthy fiancé, and a luxury apartment in Edinburgh. But Lily is living a lie. Estranged from her family, she’s tired of covering up the truth about her relationship with Nathan Collesso.  

Lily’s not the only one with troubles. Her friend, Sam, is being pursued mercilessly by a rogue cop determined to silence him. Living on the streets, Sam sees and knows too much. 

As Lily’s wedding approaches, a desperate bid to escape leaves her with a head injury and a missing fiancé. Did she harm Nathan? Did she kill him? She can’t remember. 

The net tightens, entangling Lily and Sam in a web of deception that stretches from Edinburgh to Poland. Hard truths come to light, and every decision Lily has made since the day she met Nathan Collesso comes back to haunt her.  

One false move, and she could lose her son, her friends and her life. 

Hi Helen, and welcome!

Thanks for agreeing to virtually come along and be grilled on my blog. Last summer, I had the happy task of joining in with your blog tour for the release of your thriller Unravelling, which I thoroughly enjoyed. So I was really excited to take part in the blog tour to promote the release of your new book, also a thriller: Deception.

I thought I’d be cheeky and ask you a couple of questions while I’ve got you here. Kind of.

C: What was the inspiration and motivation behind the new book, Deception?

H: Deception began in my head with the character, Lily Andersen, a young mother with a child and a keen social conscience. Unusually for me, I could visualise her clearly, and I felt compelled to write her story. I always knew she was going to have problems with her partner, but I’m not sure even I was prepared for the utter depravity of Nathan Collesso. I was also keen to explore the idea of unconventional friendships. Someone like Lily was bound to show compassion towards Sam, but I wanted to take their relationship further, showing how people with very different lives can form strong bonds and support each other through adversity. 

C: Do you think your legal training and experience enables you to approach your work from a different perspective? How do you bring your work into your writing?

H: My past experience as a social welfare lawyer has undoubtedly influenced the themes in my writing, which include addiction, mental health issues and domestic abuse. I worked closely with Women’s Aid in the past, and many of my clients were survivors of domestic abuse, a hideous problem that is often unseen. I like to think there is a strong social commentary running through each of my novels, which has definitely been inspired by my legal experience.

C: How important to you is setting. Do you feel the settings you use imbue your books with something special?

H: As a reader, I love writing that promotes a strong sense of place. It’s crucial to my enjoyment of fiction. When I wrote my first novel, In the Shadow of the Hill, several people commented that the Isle of Harris was like a character in the book. It wasn’t consciously done, but I think it’s something that has recurred throughout my writing. I lived in Edinburgh for several years, and that’s where I first began to write. It is a beautiful city, full of character, particularly the Old Town, where much of Deception is set. But, like any city, there’s more to it than what you see on the surface, and I hope I’ve succeeded in bringing a darker side of Edinburgh to life.  

C: What’s next in the pipeline for Helen Forbes and for Scolpaig Press?

H: My next novel, Queen of Grime, is also set in Edinburgh. It features Erin Flett, a crime and trauma scene cleaner from a deprived area of the city, who has a dark secret that endangers her and her family. Interestingly, the idea arose while writing Deception. Originally, the Deception character Julie Ross was a crime and trauma scene cleaner, but there was so much going on already that I couldn’t do justice to the storyline, so I decided to change Julie’s occupation and save the idea for a new project. I’ve really enjoyed writing Queen of Grime. Researching the subject of crime and trauma scene cleaning has been interesting, and not for the faint hearted. I hope I’ve managed to lighten the story with some humour, much of it black.  Queen of Grime will be published by Scolpaig Press later this year, and I am now writing a second in the series.  

Many thanks Helen for taking the time to talk to me and many congratulations on the new book!

My Review:

Let me say first of all, I loved the book. It was at times a difficult read, dealing with some of our hardest social issues in modern-day Britain. But don’t let that put anyone off reading this fast-moving, twisty-turny story.

I felt the story was insightful, the characters were cleverly, convincingly drawn and not all of them were the kind of people you’d want to spend time with. It was easy to ‘take sides’ so to speak with those characters who seemed to be genuinely good, yet at the same time, I wasn’t quite sure if I was being duped, as it quickly became clear that several people were being less than open about their pasts and about what was going on in their everyday lives in the ‘now’. It’s hard to know if you are trusting the right person at times.

I don’t want to spoil the story for those of you who haven’t yet read it – most of you as the book only comes out today! But there was one moment about halfway in the book when I just sat back and thought, I just didn’t see that coming. (Hats off to You Helen, I’m not usually surprised!)

Deception is exactly what it says: there is deception lurking in every character’s story, and at times the story is quite dark, but there is a sense of resilience and hope at the end of the book which makes the journey worthwhile and ultimately uplifting.

Fans of thrillers definitely need to read this book!

About Helen Forbes:

Helen Forbes is an author of Scottish crime fiction. She lives in her home-town of Inverness, in the Scottish Highlands. Helen began by writing contemporary and historical fiction, with no intention of turning to crime. It was a chance remark at a writing group about one of her short stories that led to her debut police procedural novel, In the Shadow of the Hill, set in Inverness and South Harris, featuring Detective Sergeant Joe Galbraith. Madness Lies is book 2 in the DS Joe Galbraith series, set in Inverness and North Uist.

A standalone crime thriller, Unravelling, was published by Scolpaig Press in July 2021.

Helen would be delighted to hear from readers. Please contact her and join her mailing list on her website http://www.helenforbes.co.uk