Domestic Thrillers WHO TO BELIEVE with Edwin Hill

Monreith, Massachusetts, was once a small community of whalers and farmers. These days it’s a well-to-do town filled with commuters drawn to its rugged coastline and country roads. A peaceful, predictable place—until popular restaurateur Laurel Thibodeau is found brutally murdered in her own home. Suspicion naturally falls on Laurel’s husband, Simon, who had gambling debts that only her life insurance policy could fix. But there are other rumors too . . .

Among the group of six friends gathered for Alice Stone’s fortieth birthday, theories abound concerning Laurel’s death. Max Barbosa, police chief, has heard plenty of them, as has his longtime friend, Unitarian minister Georgia Fitzhugh. Local psychiatrist Farley Drake is privy to even more, gleaning snippets of gossip and information from his patients while closely guarding his own past.

But maybe everyone in Monreith has something to hide. Because before this late-summer evening has come to a close, one of these six will be dead. And as jealousy, revenge, adultery, and greed converge, the question becomes not who among these friends might be capable of such a thing, but—who isn’t?

Edwin Hill recently sat down with The Big Thrill to discuss his latest domestic thriller, WHO TO BELIEVE.

Edwin Hill

My last novel, The Secrets We Share, originally featured a psychiatrist who spies on his clients. I really liked the character, but he didn’t fit into that story. When I gave him the axe, I decided that my next novel would be build around him.

Were there any particular books, movies, or songs that were knocking around in your head while you were writing this one?

Definitely! I love stories that play with structure, like Rashomon, Pulp Fiction, and The Glass Onion. I was also a big fan of the series The Affair, and another series called Clickbait that didn’t get as much play. You’ll see influences from all of these sources in WHO TO BELIEVE.

When you first created your protagonist for this book, did you see an empty space in crime lit that you wanted to fill? What can you share about the inspiration for that character?

I like to write morally ambiguous characters. For this book, I wanted to dive into the narcissism of gay culture, so I started with Dr. Farley Drake, the psychiatrist who spies on his clients, and just let my imagination go wild. He’s not morally ambiguous, he’s unambiguously self-involved and I had a ball writing his scenes!

What can you share about what you’re working on next?

Right now I’m working on a novel called What Happened Next, where a child, Charlie Kilgore, survives a murderous rampage at a lake house in New Hampshire, only to have the story turned into an episode of a Law & Order type TV series, starring a woman named Freya Faith. Years later, Charlie, now a young man, pairs up with Freya to solve a new crime.