Author AA Chaudhuri
Author AA Chaudhuri
1.  The Final Party centres on three couples gathering in a luxury villa high in the hills above the chic town of Sorrento, Italy, for the perfect 40th birthday celebration. Before the week is out one of them in dead, and their perfect reunion quickly becomes the holiday from hell when one of the group starts receiving anonymous messages, threatening to expose a dark secret from their university days.

2.  I’ve always wanted to write a thriller set abroad, particularly somewhere I’m familiar with because it’s lovely to be able to use my own experience of a setting to convey that unique sense of authenticity. It’s also nice to think I’ve transported my readers away from mundane reality to a beautiful location, especially in the colder months when we’re all feeling the winter blues and desperate for an escape to somewhere hot and heavenly.

3.  There’s something delightfully ironic and potentially more affecting about setting a thriller in a place which on the surface appears to be ‘paradise’ on earth, but turns out to be anything but. This is because the characters are not necessarily anticipating danger or threat even though we readers, as omnipotent bystanders, are on the edges of our seats knowing something bad must be around the corner principally because we are reading a thriller. The characters set out on their seemingly idyllic escape, away from their humdrum lives, expecting to relax and enjoy their time away only to find themselves thrown into a hellish situation, from which it’s harder to escape because they are in unfamiliar surroundings with no obvious means to do so.

4.  I chose to set The Final Party in Sorrento because it’s a place I’m hugely familiar with. My parents instantly fell in love with the area when we first visited back in 1984. It has so much charm to it, and the people, scenery and fascinating culture would draw us back year after year, making it feel like a home from home. It’s also where my husband and I got married back in 2007 in front of fifty guests, some of them locals. My familiarity with the location allowed me to drop in small details that hopefully make the reader feel like they are there with my characters and can picture the area through their eyes. I loved being able to transport myself back through my characters, the area holding so many special memories for me.

5.  The Final Party is told through various narratives, principally that of the six main characters of different genders. I enjoy switching voices and becoming a different person, plus it’s a challenge to make them as different as possible with their own unique backstories and idiosyncrasies that make them the people they are and which therefore makes their actions and agendas more believable. I feel that having multiple narratives can also add to the sense of suspense in that it provides for overlapping layers of intrigue, the reader never quite knowing who to trust, while also speculating on the secrets they each hold. The challenge is providing light and shade to all my characters, because no one in real life is either all good or all bad, including our own selves.

6.  I’m not a detailed plotter, but neither am I a pantser! I am more of a plantser, in that I’ll tend to write a synopsis and come up with key details that form the basis of my story, then start writing and see where it takes me. This was my approach with The Final Party, and has been with all my psychological thrillers. New ideas and further twists that take the plot on a different route (and hopefully up a gear!) than that which I had originally intended will often occur to me as I write which is always an exciting, not to mention rewarding feeling. Sometimes I might even change the main culprit, and it’s rare for me to know the ending when I start out on a new book. It certainly wasn’t the case with The Final Party. On the minus side, it’s always a bit of a risk, but the joy of coming up with something truly innovative as you write is always so thrilling.

7.  I enjoy the way psychological thrillers explore the human mind, i.e. what motivates people to act and behave in the way they do – whether that be their childhoods, the secrets they hold and daren’t come out, or a desire for revenge to name but a few. The situations, issues and themes they tend to explore are all very relatable and that’s what makes them so intriguing (not to mention unnerving) to readers, because we can all usually see ourselves, or someone we know, in a given situation a psychological thriller might explore. Because of this ‘close to the bone’ relatability psychological thrillers can often prove particularly compelling, not to mention chilling. Friendship is a universal theme we can all relate to, because of course having friends is a bit part of life. But in a thriller, they tend to take a rather dark and sinister turn, as they do in The Final Party, where relations between the characters are strained due to underlying feelings of guilt, obsession and regret, before coming to the boil in the most explosive way!

The Book

The Final Party is published in eBook and paperback out now:

A twisty, surprising thriller, with multiple narratives and shocking secrets being revealed, all blending to create an utterly compelling ‘read-in-one-sitting’.

The luxurious Amalfi Coast backdrop of the book will transport you to the sunshine of Italy, making it the perfect read to escape the winter gloom!

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