Writing the young female detective in Her Husband’s Lie
I am a child of Seventies detective series, a great era for the genre, particularly in the US where the quirky, maverick, sometimes bumbling investigator would inevitably go on to solve the case with oodles of charm and insight, which of course no one gave them any credit for at the start. Characters such as the cigar-smoking Columbo, and legal expert Petrocelli (forever building his house!), and James Rockford (who lived in a trailer and famously had an unattended answer machine), filled my head with portrayals of nuanced detectives who were unlikely heroes. I rooted for them, trusted them, even when everyone else in the episode had written them off, and having loved Natasha Lyonne’s brilliant reimagining of Columbo in Poker Face, I wanted a similarly curly-haired Seventies-style detective in Her Husband’s Lie.
Enter DC Amy Pemberton with her ubiquitous corkscrew curls, and the satchel bag she always carries, filled with crumpled bits of paper and broken biros that stain her mouth. Her floral blouses, supermarket trouser suits and pristine white trainers might suggest otherwise, but she will prove herself to be tenacious, intuitive, and intelligent. A true Millennial, she is vegan, drinks oat milk in her coffee, or takes it black, and rarely finds time to eat or sleep as she is drawn into an increasingly complex and sinister missing person investigation, dedicating herself to finding the truth despite huge responsibilities in her personal life.
She is a young woman who speaks her mind, but is respectful to her boss and Nicole, older women who both underestimate her ability. She works methodically, despite her fondness for old-school handwritten evidence and her trusty notebook, and she never gives up, even when it seems impossible to crack open the secrets of the Delaney marriage.
Nicole, twenty years her senior, represents a different generation of woman who have not been afforded the same opportunities, and often made different choices, ones Amy finds hard to reconcile with her expectations of modern motherhood.
As Amy scrapes at the truth, she will discover the facts of Nic’s seemingly ‘perfect’ marriage, confirming her suspicions and getting to the real reason Matt Delaney vanished. Amy never completely believes the story she is given, which in the best tradition of all the most successful fictional detectives is of course the only way to crack the case.
Get your copy of Amanda’s brand new book here: https://mybook.to/husbandsliesocial