Someone is acting out details from a successful mystery author’s plots in real life. Who? Why? Brook and Sarah discuss how they would handle a similar situation to Emilia Ward in Claire Douglas’ 2023 release The Woman Who Lied.
Spoiler warning: In this episode, Brook and Sarah discuss the book and its plot points in detail.
Discussed and mentioned
The Woman Who Lied (2023) Claire Douglas
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Transcript
This transcript is generated by a computer and there may be some mis-spellings and strange punctuation. We try to catch these before posting, but some things slip through.
| Sarah | Welcome to Clued in Mystery. I’m Sarah. |
| Brook | And I’m Brook, and we both love mystery. |
| Sarah | Hi, Brook. |
| Brook | Hi, Sarah. Today, we’re putting ourselves in the main character’s shoes and asking the question, “what would you do?” |
| Sarah | Yes, I love these episodes because it’s a neat way to read through a book and think about what are the characters’ motivations? |
| Sarah | Before we begin, Brook, I should mention that as with all of our What Would You do episodes, we’re getting into a lot of detail about the book. And so if you haven’t read the book, there will be spoilers for you. So we encourage you to go ahead and read the book and then come back and listen to the episode. |
| Brook | That’s right. And this week, we’re discussing The Woman Who Lied by Claire Douglas. So, in this book, Emelia Ward is a bestselling crime writer preparing to publish the final book in her popular detective series. But as her publication day approaches, strange incidents begin occurring around her. |
| Brook | Incidents that mirror crimes, threats, and plot points from her own novels. At first, the similarities seem impossible to explain and are chalked up to coincidence. |
| Brook | Soon, though, the events become more personal, scarier, and increasingly difficult to to dismiss. As Emelia tries to uncover who’s behind all this, she finds herself questioning a smaller and smaller suspect pool. |
| Brook | So, Sarah, this story premise just fascinates me. Primarily because both of us are authors and, you know, usually this would happen in reverse. Writers observe something that happens out in the world and we think, oh, how could I use that? How could I, you know, kind of twist it and incorporate it into a story? But in this book, the author’s imagined situation seemingly begin to come true. So I think it’s the perfect what would you do book for us. |
| Sarah | Well, yeah, I love the premise, right? The idea that what this author has written is coming true and not just like in the world, but to her. We should probably mention that the book, ah most of it is told from um Emelia’s perspective. ah But there are these scenes that are interspersed that are a detective. And maybe we can talk a little bit about what did you think those scenes were at first? |
| Brook | Yeah, that’s a great question because it’s a little mysterious as you’re reading. I would get to those sections before I I caught on and be a little thrown off. ah Like, what am I reading here? And, it wasn’t until fairly far into the book that I realized what was happening. |
| Sarah | I’m the same. So initially, it’s very strongly hinted and suggested that these are scenes from Emelia’s last book, right, that the detective narrator is her character investigating the plot of Emelia’s latest book, it turns out that this is actually a detective investigating crimes that are very similar to what take place in the book. So, there’s not only the plot points, ah for example, the first one where Emelia is on a bus and the bus gets diverted because there’s a bomb scare at a local attraction that’s nearby. And that’s very similar to what happens in one of her books. |
| Sarah | She’s experiencing very similar plot points in real life to ones that she had written. And that’s why i think there’s this confusion, intentional, I’m sure, between whether this is her character’s investigation or actual police investigation. |
| Brook | Right, right. It’s a really clever way to create a large red herring, essentially, because it sends us as readers kind of down ah the wrong thought path. But that first, you mentioned the explosion, and I think that is the first ah great what would you do question because ah the bomb scare is very similar to what she wrote in her book. And she goes home and just kind of scratching her head and talking to her family. um Do you think that you’d be very concerned at this point? |
| Sarah | I don’t think so. Right. This is very easy to chalk up to a um coincidence. Right. She lives in London. It’s a very big city. It is not unheard of for London to have bomb scares, which is probably why she wrote that into her book. |
| Sarah | The fact that it was that she was on a bus when it happened, like that’s a little weird, but um Yeah, I don’t I don’t think that it would be raising any red flags for me at this point. What about you? |
| Brook | Yeah, I agree. I think in some ways it, in some ways it might reinforce that like, “wow, I, created a really great plot point a great situation for a character because look at that i actually lived through it and all of us on that bus lived through it” and it’s um I don’t think that I’d be too concerned at this point. |
| Sarah | Yeah, you’re right. Kind of patting yourself on the back for writing such a realistic scene. |
| Brook | Yes so relatable. |
| Sarah | But shortly after that, there’s a package that’s delivered to her house. So there’s no name attached to the package. It’s figurine of the seagull. And this is meaningful because at her detective character does not like seagulls. |
| Brook | Yes. |
| Sarah | And so with this would this raise a red flag for you, Brook? |
| Brook | Absolutely. I think that by receiving this very specific item that is only special in the books, it would… then make me question and look back at the bombing, right? I’d be like, okay, maybe I was too quick to dismiss that because it’s at your house oh, and the seagull’s head was broken off as well, Sarah. So, there’s this creepy factor. |
| Sarah | Yeah which I think she kind of thinks “oh maybe it got broken in the um in the delivery” so she’s a ah little bit I don’t think she takes it as as seriously right it like she she says you know “this is weird um maybe it’s a fan has figured out where I live,” makes her a bit uncomfortable, but she’s not, um, you know, not super concerned. Although she does mention this to her friend who is a police detective, her friend Louise. um and Louise, uh, encourages her to, you know, maybe you should just get a little bit more home security, right? She’s got this, um, entryway to the to the house that is often left unlocked. And she’s like, you know, i just think you you might want to lock that up. um And this is shortly after um she finds a ah troll doll hanging from her tree. So this is kind of after the third strange coincidence. |
| Sarah | Again, this is another plot point from one of her books. And at her regular meeting with this friend of hers who has a child in the same class as as Emelia’s son, she says, you know, these strange things have been happening. And this is this is when and Detective Louise says, you know, just get yourself some security. It sounds like someone’s, you know, just being a bit weird. |
| Brook | She also has a good resource in her father-in-law who has been in law enforcement. Now he is a security guard. And um so she’s able to run some things by him as well. And he agrees with Louise, like we need to ramp up your security um and get things dialed in because it makes a lot of sense that this is like a fan kind of taunting her. And so I think that at my at this point, I would feel really good taking that advice and then feeling pretty safe after that. um |
| Brook | I think that this is one of the pitfalls of becoming really famous as any sort of creator, right? It’s okay. these I’ve gotten to that stage of my career where I need to take security a little more seriously. |
| Sarah | Mm-hmm. Well, and and I think she’s looking ahead a little bit because in this final book that she has just submitted to her publisher, um you said it’s the final book in her series, but it’s definitely the final book because she is killing off her detective. And this is a very well-loved series. As you said, she’s very popular. |
| Sarah | People are likely to ah respond quite passionately. And so, yeah, it makes a lot of sense to just ah amp up the security ah a little bit so that um if anybody else figures out where she lives, they will be safe and secure. |
| Brook | But then her husband has to go out of town and because she’s been feeling a little exposed here, she decides to have another friend, Ottilie. And this is a friend that she has known since boarding school. Come spend the night with her. And that really helps. And Ottilie is a, she’s a friend that is just lighthearted. She’s going to make you, you know, have a good time and laugh about these situations. ah But in the middle of the night, when Ottilie is there, some really disturbing things happen and that once again tie back to the books. um The skylights open, which apparently in the books is the way that the villain enters homes. So her skylights are open and her Alexa begins playing a “Psycho Killer” in the middle of the night. |
| Sarah | So this is particularly unsettling because she’s at home with her two children. She’s got a teenage daughter and a son who’s in elementary school. And yes, Ottilie is there, but it’s two women alone in the house with these, with these two kids. |
| Brook | Yeah. Would you wonder if someone is kind of watching you because her husband, whose name is Elliot, is gone. And I think I would be thinking, oh my gosh, like this is too perfectly timed. Is someone watching me? |
| Sarah | Yeah, I, I think I would be quite concerned about that. Yeah, she she’s she’s very unsettled at this point. um So, Brook, would you report this to the police, do you think? |
| Brook | I think I would, and um and especially in my situation. But when I think about Emelia, she has a very good friend, Louise, who is in police. She’s not in the same, um I don’t think she’s in the same jurisdiction or in the same like part of the police force that would cover something like this, but she’s got this resource. And then she’s got Trevor, her father-in-law, who has been in um security and policing. And so I think that she goes to them and gets advice and maybe some assurances. And that, in a sense, kind of prevents her from going farther. And I think that that was a mistake on her part. I do think that there should be more communication with the police about these things that are happening. |
| Sarah | And then um shortly after that, she gets contacted by a reporter who says, “I understand there are some strange things happening to you.” And she doesn’t know who has tipped this reporter off because she hasn’t filed a police claim. Right. ah But she does speak to the to this reporter and it a story is published about this. Would you ah speak to a reporter? Do you think like, would you want attention brought to this? |
| Brook | Yeah, it’s interesting when she talks to those people close to her. I mean, her husband almost encourages it. Like, hey, well, this is probably going to help. the you know like This eerie situation that ah crime writers in might help sell books. you know Go for it. And I would be very… |
| Brook | especially with ah the way that this person kind of mysteriously contacts you, i would have been very timid to go and meet with this person and share the information because One thing that ah the author does really good in this book is each time Emelia is with someone, I start to question them. And I think I would worry that this journalist is the bad guy. Like, how does she know I’m having these episodes? |
| Sarah | Mm-hmm. |
| Brook | What is going on? She’s a stranger to me. i don’t i don’t know that I would do it. And I definitely wouldn’t do it if I hadn’t at least made the police report. |
| Sarah | Well, and it’s around this time that she really pieces together that the last strange thing that has happened to her comes from this unpublished book that she has only shared with a few people, right? So her editor at the at the publisher has it, maybe her agent has it, and then a handful of the people who are closest to her because they are her early readers. So her parents, um her, I think her husband and possibly Trevor, I can’t remember, um who is her father-in-law, and Ottilie, believe also has a copy. |
| Brook | Yes. |
| Sarah | And Louise is familiar with the story because ah she was a like expert advisor that ah Emelia has been using to to make her stories feel more authentic. So, she realizes that it must, whoever is doing this to her, must be someone who is in this tight circle of people who are close to her. |
| Brook | I know this is where things get real because this isn’t a crazed fan. This isn’t someone out yeah from the outside trying to get in. It’s somebody that’s already in her life. And she understandably gets very frantic at this point and is questioning everyone. |
| Sarah | Yeah. so she starts to like make this list of people who who it could be um because ah the most recent strange event is that her daughter and her daughter’s friend were sent tickets to a concert that they had been told they weren’t allowed to attend But um someone sent a pair of tickets to them anonymously through the friend’s boyfriend. And so then the girls, it seems like they’ve gone missing. Emelia gets this phone call from someone who she believes is at a hospital saying that her daughter is injured. And so there’s this almost frantic search for her daughter. She gets Louise to come and help her. And ah the daughter, the the girls are ultimately found safe and sound. um But it’s at this point that she’s like, “who would do this to me?” |
| Brook | Mm-hmm. That’s right. I don’t know, Sarah, do you think with with all the, we’ve talked about the seagull, and the troll doll, and the the skylights were open in her house, would you even allow your teenage daughter to go spend the night with the friend? Because the the teenagers did that very classic, I’m going to stay at Sally’s house and Sally says, I’m going to stay at Jane’s house. And they you know But would you have even been allowing your kids to go about their go to school and go to their friend’s house and |
| Sarah | Yeah, it I mean, it’s hard. And you probably can ah speak to this a little bit more because you um were more recently in this stage of life. But I think as teens, you know, they’re really starting to assert their independence. And it it’s hard to balance that parent relationship without potentially harming that relationship that you have with your child. um And I think the the daughter was already like, “you’re you’re acting really strange, mom. Like, you know, give me a break.” |
| Sarah | So, yeah, I don’t know. I think after after that, though, certainly Emelia’s like, no, you are not going to any sleepovers. |
| Brook | That’s right. |
| Sarah | A couple of things happening in quick succession. So she, um, sees a troll doll at her ex-husband’s house. Um, and her ex-husband’s wife is her former close friend. Um, who also is on this list of people who have had the opportunity to read her book because she’s, you know, um still friendly with her ex-husband because they have this daughter that they share. And, you know, she’s realized that it’s much better to be friendlier than than to have ah an acrimonious relationship with him. |
| Sarah | ah But she is in the house and sees this troll doll and immediately her former friend, her ex-husband’s wife, becomes her prime suspect, right? |
| Sarah | That she’s for some reason been manufacturing these these um scary events in Emelia’s life. But then shortly after that, she gets a call from Louise, a voicemail message saying, “I’m really, really sorry. Please come to my house and I’ll explain everything.” And so Emelia is very concerned because she doesn’t know what Louise is talking about. She shows up at Louise’s house and Louise is dead. |
| Brook | Yes. |
| Sarah | And not only is she dead, but she has a a marking on her ankle that, again, comes from Emelia’s book. And this is where we learn that the detective scenes that we’ve been reading are real life, because this is the same marking that a serial killer has been leaving on the ankles of his victims. |
| Brook | That’s right. So the two worlds converge here, at least superficially. I don’t think we completely understand. and Emelia certainly doesn’t understand what’s going on. But the marking is the marking in the fictional world that she’s created on the victims But this is something happening in actual life as well. And as you said, we we are had been reading about the current investigations happening there. So that was a really strong point in the story. |
| Sarah | Well, so so the detective who’s investigating this serial killer cannot understand how Emelia wrote this into her book because that particular detail is something that had not been made public. So how could she possibly have known about this? |
| Sarah | And Emelia says, “Look…It came out of my story.” What she doesn’t admit is that the seed for this story actually came from Louise. And so she’s feeling ah pretty torn up about what to say because she has passed this idea and this book off as her own when really the germ of it was this short story that Louise had written and said, “I’m not going to do anything with it. You see what you can do.” |
| Brook | That’s right. Yeah. So, Sarah, the manuscript is off at the publishers? At what point would you admit to the fact that It wasn’t just an idea that someone one gave you. You literally took some of their writing and passed it off as your own, essentially. |
| Sarah | Yeah, and so in this book, there are scenes that ah feature this character, Daisy. And I think it’s those particular sections that Emelia has passed off as her own, but they they actually came from Louise. um And what Emelia doesn’t realize is that Louise was writing from experience. |
| Brook | That’s right. |
| Sarah | I would like to think that I wouldn’t even find myself in that situation, Brook, that I had taken someone else’s work and not acknowledged that that I’d used it in my own. But Emelia kind of justifies that she did this because she was really at this burnout point. She knew she didn’t want to continue this series, but she had, um you know, contractual obligations to do so. |
| Sarah | I mean, I think at this point, I think you have to come clean. Your good friend is dead, right? These strange things have been happening. Nothing to say that um the harm or sorry, the risk to Emelia and her family has gone away. I think I think I would be saying, “guys, um there’s something going on here.” |
| Brook | For sure. and I get frustrated with Emelia at this point because she doesn’t even want to tell her husband that she’s done this. And I just want to shake her. And yeah, I would definitely be explaining what happened and just having to face the facts of of this unethical thing that I’ve done. |
| Sarah | Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And at this point, um there are some some clear suspects that emerge. So one is her husband because someone riding his bike that they had kept just inside the front door of their home that it had been stolen a few nights earlier, but um a witness saw someone riding this bike away from Louise’s house. |
| Sarah | Ah So that kind of suggests that it could be her husband. And then she’s also quite suspicious of Trevor, her, her father-in-law because, as she pieces together, okay, this is a real story um and real events. And ah there’s this serial killer. She thinks, oh, my goodness, is this killer my my father-in-law? |
| Brook | He fits the description quite well when she goes back and she looks at this as having been a real person. His life experience and also his physical features, he kind of fits the description. So, she becomes very suspicious of both her husband and him. |
| Sarah | In the detective scenes, we learn that the detective doesn’t think that Louise was the victim of her serial killer that she is she has been pursuing. Because there are some inconsistencies in terms of how she was killed versus how the um serial killer’s other victims were killed. And we learn that this story about Daisy that Emelia had incorporated into her book was based on Louise’s life, that her mother had been killed by this serial killer. And Daisy had found her her mother’s body um And the detective says, “you know, I don’t actually think that her mother was a victim.” So there’s someone who is um a copycat killer, if you will. |
| Brook | Mm-hmm. That’s right. Which just like puts on another layer of confusion for Emelia. I just don’t think I would know what to think at this point because she’s got so many suspicions. I would feel like I had no one to trust. |
| Brook | um She’s got this small circle who had access to the last book. And i just think I would feel so alone at this point. |
| Sarah | In her book, this Daisy character ah realizes that the person who killed her mother is the father of her boyfriend, Ash. And so this is where Emelia is like, “oh my gosh, my husband is Ash,” right? |
| Sarah | Because there’s some um similarities in terms of where he went to university, um that he had to take a leave of absence from school because he had a had a breakdown. And this is the same for the character of Ash. And she is certain that Trevor is this killer. |
| Brook | Yeah. Yeah. And she confronts both of them about it. And I have to say, I felt like those characters took this pretty well. um They tried to reassure her and, you know, didn’t get too bent out of shape of being accused of being murderers. But ah I think that they could see in Emelia that she was just pretty much going off the rails at this point. And I thought that they handled that quite well, but Elliot does get taken to the police station for questioning. |
| Sarah | That’s right. And so she goes to Ottilie to, to find comfort, right? Her world is essentially collapsed around her. And while she’s at Ottilie’s house, Ottilie has this cat and she realizes that it’s Louise’s cat. So, what would you do, Brook? |
| Brook | That was one of the scariest scenes actually. Because she’s been drinking the beverage that Ottilie offers her and she sees that this is Louise’s cat and I think all these connections, although confusing as can be, all these connections would be firing for me, and I would realize that I was in real danger. |
| Sarah | And she is in danger, right? Ottilie has put a sedative into her drink. But before Emelia can come to harm, Ottilie leaves her in this apartment. And…The police have figured out who the serial killer is but also who the killer of Louise is. And um the book ends with a little denouement where Emelia has told everybody the truth about everything. She’s had to rewrite significant portions of her book, comes out a little later than ah anticipated. She has managed to repair some of those relationships with her ah close friends and and ah with with her family. |
| Brook | That’s right. So, Sarah, another what would you do here? Do you think if this happened to you, you would keep writing crime fiction? |
| Sarah | Ooh, that’s such a good question, Brook. I don’t know. It might might just be a little too close to home now. |
| Brook | I know. I was imagining that Emelia might need to switch genres. |
| Sarah | Yeah, you know, I made a note that um the women who are closest to her, there’s three of them at different points in her life, and they all betray her, right? So, it turns out that the person who was behind all of these strange things was Louise, who wanted to call attention to this book and this story in particular because she wanted to find out who this killer was. who had killed her mother. |
| Sarah | So Louise betrays her. Ottilie betrays her. Ottilie, who’s been her friend since… ah grade school, betrays her because, you know, she tries to kill her. She kills her friend, Louise. And then her friend, Kristen, who was at school with, with Emelia and, and Ottilie, Kristen betrayed Emelia and married Emelia’s husband after after they divorced. um So, you know, she can’t rely on any of the women in her life, which I thought was a bit of a sad point. |
| Brook | Yeah, that’s really interesting. I hadn’t thought about the fact that really none of her female friends are left at the end. That’s a tough one for me. i would have i would like to her to have at least someone. |
| Sarah | Mm-hmm. So, if if she is going to continue to write, maybe she will write something about women friendships and see them actually being positive things in someone’s life. |
| Brook | And then maybe that could come true in her world. |
| Sarah | Okay, well, thank you, Brook. I think this has been really fun to break down this book. Like I said, I loved the premise of this. And I think it’s kind of fun to think about both what would I do if I were the main character, but also what would I do if my writing was inspiring someone to commit crimes? |
| Brook | Yes, Sarah, this one was especially fun to break down together. But before we go, I do have a question of the week, listeners. Emelia discovers events from her books may be happening in real life. What mystery novel would you hate to find yourself living through? |
| Brook | Let us know your answer on social media or by email. We’d love to hear what you think. But until next time, thank you for joining us on Clued in Mystery. I’m Brook. |
| Sarah | And I’m Sarah, and we both love mystery. |
