Philippa Perry has released her debut crime novel, Shrink Solves Murder, a South Downs mystery inspired by walks around Birling Gap.
Philippa Perry has published her debut crime novel, setting the murder mystery in the South Downs landscape where she has lived for more than two decades.
The psychotherapist, broadcaster and author said she was delighted to “finally join the murder mystery club” with Shrink Solves Murder , a cosy crime story built around a psychotherapist who begins investigating after a body is found on a beach.
Perry, 68, is best known for non-fiction informed by her work as a psychotherapist, including the bestseller The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read . Her move into fiction places her in a popular genre she said she has long enjoyed reading.
“It’s a cosy crime novel for people who like to lose themselves in a book and for people who like a good page turner,” Perry said. She described the book as broadly aimed at readers, especially those who enjoy Agatha Christie and Richard Coles novels.
The setting is closely tied to Perry’s own life in East Sussex. She said she had wanted to place the story around Birling Gap because walking there fuels her imagination. Perry and her husband, artist and writer Grayson Perry, have lived in the South Downs for more than 25 years.
In the novel, a death first treated as suicide is questioned by the main character, who suspects something more sinister. Perry said there are “some similarities” between herself and the protagonist, though she added that the character is “much grumpier” and that she would make “a useless sleuth.”
Perry said she does not test her writing on friends or family because she wants the work to remain her own. Fiction, she said, has offered a different kind of creative freedom from her non-fiction: “Writing non-fiction feels like work for me but this novel felt like playing while also being able to express things.”
She indicated that murder mysteries may become the next phase of her writing life, saying she has always enjoyed reading them and is pleased now to be writing them too.
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