Best-selling thriller novelist and author Louise Candlish shares her writing offcuts which include: a deleted chapter from one of her most successful novels, a TV drama that didn't get picked up, the prologue of an abandoned novel, a pitch for a book written before the idea was fully developed, and a couple of stories that reveal her taste for melodrama from a very young age.
CAST: Beth Chalmers, Helen Goldwyn, Emma Clarke and Marcus Hutton
Louise Candlish is an internationally bestselling author known for her contributions to contemporary crime and psychological thriller fiction. Since publishing her first novel in 2004, Candlish has released 18 novels - including The Island Hideaway (originally Prickly Heat), The Double Life of Anna Day, and The Swimming Pool. Her bestseller Our House (2018) won the British Book Awards Crime & Thriller Book of the Year in 2019 and was adapted into a major ITV drama.
Candlish’s 2023 novel The Only Suspect garnered two prestigious awards: the Capital Crime Fingerprint Award for Thriller of the Year and the Ned Kelly Award for International Crime Fiction. Her 2024 novel Our Holiday was recognized as a Sunday Times Top 10 bestseller and was shortlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year.
Her most recent book, A Neighbour’s Guide to Murder, is just published in the UK and will come out in 2026 in the US. Candlish’s work has been acknowledged repeatedly by industry awards, including longlistings for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year and shortlistings for the CWA Dagger in the Library Award.
For more details about the writer, the offcuts and the actors performing them see the episode show notes: offcutsdrawer.com/louise-candlish
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