‘So what are you boys up to these days?’ he asked Shawn now. ‘New album in the pipeline?’

Shawn looked surprised. ‘Haven’t you heard?’ He sounded slightly outraged. ‘OnT have split up. This thing with Burns was, like, the final straw, but I’ve been thinking about going solo for quite a while, you know, be a real musician. No more of that manufactured shite.’

‘Oh right,’ Patrick said politely, declining to add that he’d been rather too busy attending court as a witness for the prosecution of a serial killer to have noticed that Britain’s favourite boy band had gone their separate ways.

‘Speaking of real musicians, I’m just on my way backstage now to meet Bob and the lads,’ Shawn said casually. ‘I remember you mentioned you’re a fan. Want to tag along? I can get you a couple of these, no bother.’ He stuck out his hand to show off his Access All Areas wristband.

Gill’s eyes opened wide as saucers. Patrick smiled at her, then looked back at Shawn Barrett; little more than a kid with muscles, really, he thought. A very rich kid with muscles.

‘Very kind of you,’ he said. ‘I’m tempted – but to be honest we need to get home. Send him my best, though, won’t you?’

‘Are you insane?’ Gill asked him once they were on the train, surrounded by hot, excited middle-aged people in Cure T-shirts. ‘I thought you’d have sold your mother for a chance to meet Robert Smith. We don’t even have to get back for a babysitter!’

Patrick looked pensive. ‘Yeah, a few years ago maybe. But you know what they say – never meet your idols.’

He saw the girls then in his mind’s eye: Rose, Jessica, Jade, Wendy . . . and Chloe Hedges, at least home now with her family. Thank God one of them was. The blissfully dead. It was a phrase from ‘Lullaby’, the song the band had opened their set with, and it chased itself around his head.

He hoped that they were; that such a thing was possible.

Letter from the Authors

Dear Reader

Thanks for reading The Blissfully Dead. It goes without saying that we hope you enjoyed it and would love to hear your thoughts about it. Our email address is [email protected] or you can message us through our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/vossandedwards.

In this letter we’re going to tell you a little about the inspiration behind this book and also how we write together. Please be aware that this letter may contain some spoilers, so please don’t read it if you haven’t already finished the book.

The initial idea for this book came from a TV documentary called Crazy About One Direction, which was shown on Channel 4 in the UK in 2013. In this documentary, a number of teenage fans of the titular boy band demonstrated their extreme love for their idols and revealed the rivalry and jealousy that can spring up when emotions are high and hormones are running riot. One interesting thread of the documentary focused on fan fiction and ‘shipping’, the creation of stories in which members of the band are engaged in a love affair.

The documentary itself was illuminating, but the reaction of One Direction’s fans was even more fascinating. Twitter exploded with outrage and horror, the girls who appeared on the programme were vilified and, bizarrely, thousands of fans began to tweet claims that a number of ‘shippers’ were so distraught they had committed suicide. These claims were false, but it demonstrated how fandom and social media can collide to create what can only be described as hysteria.

We are both big music lovers and first bonded over our love of The Cure (whose song ‘Lullaby’ gave this novel its title). Also, Louise used to work in the music industry. We knew writing a novel set in that world would be fun.

As we started to write The Blissfully Dead, and to think about the relationship between fans and celebrities, our thoughts turned to the Operation Yewtree investigations of the last few years. For non-UK readers, these investigations exposed a number of high-profile pop stars, DJs and TV personalities when women came forward to claim that they had been sexually assaulted as teenagers by these famous men decades ago. In most cases, they had been afraid to accuse them at the time – or had done so and been ignored or ridiculed. As we write, some formerly much-loved stars are now in prison, their pasts exposed, their reputations destroyed.

We should point out that all of the characters in The Blissfully Dead are fictional and not based on any real people, but some of the cases referred to in the book, including Ian Watkins, the former singer with Lostprophets, are factual. OnTarget are not based on One Direction but are a composite of all the manufactured bands who have inspired devotion over the years.

So how did we write it? This is the question we get asked more than any other: exactly how do two people go about writing a novel together? We live several hundred miles apart (that’s not too bad; we wrote our first novel with one of us in London, the other in Tokyo) and don’t meet up very often. But when we start, we get together and discuss the basic plot of the book and create a chapter plan.

We follow the ‘driving in the dark’ method of writing, where you can only see a certain distance ahead. So our initial chapter plan might cover the first ten chapters. We divide them up and get going. One of us writes a chapter and sends it to the other. That person edits it and makes comments, then sends it back. When we are both happy with the chapter it goes into a master document.

Our books nearly always have multiple narrators, so we each choose characters to write, though we take turns to write from our main character’s point of view. There are certain types of scene that suit us best. For example, Mark usually writes action scenes and Louise tends to write more emotional chapters. But we mix these up more than we used to. We’re not saying who writes the sex scenes . . .

During the writing of the novel we meet several times to discuss the plot and when we finally reach the end, we both go through and produce a huge list of points to be addressed. But co-writing is much easier than writing a novel solo because you get instant feedback and somebody to bounce ideas off. We highly recommend it – as long as you find the right person. It’s no lie to say that over the course of six novels together we have never argued. We imagine that married couples who co-write books have far more heated discussions than we’ve ever had!

The Blissfully Dead is the second novel to feature DI Patrick Lennon, following From the Cradle. We have lots more adventures planned for Lennon and we hope that you’ll be there to find out what challenge he faces next . . . and whether Winkler will ever turn out to have any redeeming qualities.

Best wishes

Louise and Mark

P.S. If you want to be the first to find out about our new books, special deals, etc., you can join our email list at www.vossandedwards.com/newsletter.

Acknowledgements

A number of people generously helped with research for this book, including Elizabeth Haynes, Simon Alcock, Chris Phillips, Elaine Burtenshaw and (for Dublin-based information) Alice Brady. As always, any procedural inaccuracies are ours.

Thanks to everyone who helped us make this book better, including our editor Katie Green, our agent Sam Copeland and Sara Edwards who read an early draft and helped with research into the foster care system. Thank you too to Gracie Voss for helping with the teen speak!