CLAIRE LADDS

Author of character-driven psychological literary fiction and other darker books, all with an emotional pull

Books & Reading

Sad Cypress (Read Christie Challenge, April 2026): Beloved Book in my Collection

by Leave a Comment

Image shows Sad Cypress book cover facing outwards on a bookcase filled with Agatha Christie books. Text on the image reads: Agatha Christie Challenge 2026, April. My choice for beloved in my collection, Sad Cypress.

I am still reading my way joyously through the list of books I have chosen for the Read Christie challenge this year. During April, participants were tasked with choosing a book which is beloved in their Agatha Christie collection. Now, there are many that I really like, and some that I absolutely adore. There are also one or two of Christie’s novels which have captivated a part of me and won’t let me go. So, actually, this became a really tricky choice, as I had to decide where to place other books, and in which months, for the challenge. Ultimately, my choice came down to the two novels which captured my heart from the moment I first read them: Sad Cypress or Endless Night. I will certainly be discussing Endless Night later in the year for a different month’s premise. Today, it is Sad Cypress that I have chosen as ‘beloved in my collection’.

I remember more vividly than most of my reading exploits the day that I began reading this novel for the first time. I was a teenager of about fourteen, and one with a huge capacity for imagination. I read this book in our back garden but before long, if you had asked me where I was, I would have described a very different place. So absorbed was I in the world of Sad Cypress that I was reading in the gardens of the ancestral home inside its pages, a rose trellis close to me with the breeze cascading the aroma of red roses all around my head, as I sat at a little table which held a plate of fish paste sandwiches, and indoors, when I went to continue reading out of the sun and sat on the imaginary giant wooden spiral staircase, a black medical bag magically opened, revealing a tube of Morphia. Only something about it did not seem quite right…

Now, I feel, this bizarre description might need putting into some sort of sensible context. Here is a brief summary of the book, in case you have never come across it before (there are no spoilers regarding ‘who did it’, but there are details which appear further into the book, so please skip this part if you want to read it with no preconceptions of the plot):

~

Elinor Carlisle, heir to to her aunt’s fortune, stands in the dock, accused of murdering Mary Gerrard. An anonymous letter suggests that Elinor and her fiancé, Roddy, (also a relation to old Mrs Welman by marriage) need to watch out for Mary, who is becoming all together too close to Mrs Welman and may make trouble where inheritance is concerned. But, once Elinor and Roddy head to their aunt to see what all the fuss is about, things get much worse. Roddy’s visceral and sudden love for Mary Gerrard causes the engagement to be broken off. Worse still, their aunt dies. Meanwhile, Mary, now with a small provision made to her by the very honourable Elinor, has made a will – so now it seems she has something to leave to its recipient. Elinor, too, has made a will, leaving everything she inherits to Roddy.

While clearing out the house before its sale and also that of the associated lodge where Mary’s father lived, Elinor makes fish paste sandwiches, and invites Mary and nurse Hopkins who has taken a shine to Mary and is helping out, to have lunch with her. An hour later, Elinor and nurse Hopkins find Mary dead.

Did Elinor poison Mary Gerrard by adding Morphine to the sandwiches? The police are so convinced by this theory, and the evidence which backs it up, that she is in the dock for murder. Or could someone malign be framing Elinor to suit their own ends? Doctor Lorde, who attended to old Mrs Welman, is determined to get Elinor off at all costs, and enlists the help of his friend, Hercule Poirot to do so. Poirot, being Poirot, intends to seek out the truth, even if that might mean he discovers that Elinor is actually guilty of murdering Mary Gerrard – and of other atrocities along the way. But sometimes there are things even Poirot does not want to know…

~

So, why exactly is it so beloved in my collection? The answer is threefold: Christie’s use of structure, her treatment of character, and the thematic undercurrent that pervades every aspect of this book.

Firstly, structure. The story itself is cyclical and I truly love a cyclical story. We begin in the courtroom, where Elinor Carlisle is being accused of the murder of Mary Gerrard. And, to be honest, as readers, we do not know if she did or not. So Christie takes us back to the beginning of the whole event: to the point when Elinor and her fiancé, Roddy, receive an anonymous letter warning them that someone may be trying to get their hands on the inheritance. We follow the whole process to the murder, and then to Elinor’s arrest. And so begins a separate section – the investigation by Poirot, with everything a reader can expect, from the questioning of suspects through to Poirot’s own quirky ways of finally bringing his findings to a conclusion, which he always states will be the truth, regardless of what that is. We are pulled this way and that over who might be guilty throughout the entire middle section of the novel. Finally, we return to the courtroom, where the excitement mounts and justice is delivered – and we, the readers, finally discover whether Elinor is guilty or innocent.

I will look at character and the thematic undercurrent together, as they are intricately linked. The people in this book have a great deal of hidden depth, which I absolutely love. Christie is excellent at hinting at what is below the surface through events that happen or have happened in the past, or through partially thought-out ideas of her protagonists. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the character of Elinor Carlisle. She can appear as someone rather lacking in passion on the surface, but when we spend time reading between the lines of everything Elinor does, says and in particular thinks, we find a woman who is extremely emotionally aware of herself and of the devastation that love, and betrayal, can cause a person. Her thoughts are powerful, passionate, sometimes dangerous and take her to the brink of murder (whether she goes through with it I will leave you to discover for yourself).

The hidden emotional depth appears to run in the family. One of the most powerful features of this novel, for me, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the murder mystery. I have always been fascinated by the painful undercurrent of the tragedy of love and, indeed, I think this has always appealed to me the most about this book. The emotions, particularly those which are buried from everyone but the reader, and those which have been hidden due to years of societal expectation, are strong and carry the motivations of certain characters throughout (I am being careful to avoid spoilers here). Mrs Welman has a past which she has been holding close to her heart for decades. When we discover what this is, I think it is impossible not to feel anguish for the old lady’s plight, and a distaste for the social, political and legal situations which prevent a deep and enduring love from being fulfilled. Poirot, however, with his astute and sympathetic understanding of the intricacies of the human heart at its most passionate, loving, vulnerable and, indeed, dangerous, shows himself to be so much more than the quirky little Belgian detective who uses order and method and collects facts alone. He shows himself to be human. For me, the ones in which Poirot is sunk into the grey areas of the guilty and the innocent are always the best Poirot stories because it adds a level of complexity to the vehicle for crime-solving. Poirot’s detection is impeccable here. While reading I am both rooting for him all the way, and also hoping against hope that he finds something which will acquit Elinor, as the evidence is stacked ridiculously high against her.

If you have never read Sad Cypress, if you love Agatha Christie books, or if you are trying them out for the first time, if you are a Hercule Poirot fan (as I am, as you will most certainly know if you have read other posts of mine or are in my Readers’ Club), or if you find intrigue in the complexities of love, passion and secrets which society prevents women from revealing while also being embroiled in solving a mystery and all of it flanked by the courtroom drama which plays out over the Accused (and yes, I am aware there was a lot there), then I heartily recommend this novel. You can then read it for yourself and see why it is my Read Christie choice for April.

You might also like:

The ABC Murders (Read Christie Challenge, March 2026): Book that made the biggest impact on me as a young reader

Death on the Nile (Read Christie Challenge, February 2026): My choice for ‘beloved characters’

JOIN MY READERS’ CLUB

Image shows a horizontal rose and various reading screens with a cover of Petal by Petal short story collection on them. Each one has a rose rising up out of petals scattered all over the floor on a brown and oil painting textured background.
FIND OUT MORE: START HERE

What’s at the Heart of my Psychological Suspense Fiction?

by

Ever since I was a small child, I have been a reader and a writer in equal measure (most of the time). Without even realising it for a long time, I would delve the depths of a book I enjoyed for whatever I felt was at its core: the reasons behind whatever was its central theme or moment. It has always been that I have wanted to get under the skin of a story, right to its very heart. The same has always applied to my writing. To make me interested, then obsessed by, a story enough to pursue it to its ending (however dark, tragic, twisty or heartfelt) there needs to be this same kind of heart, one which makes me love to be at my desk with the story, the characters, and the very words themselves. The elements of this beating heart are rarely the same for two stories running, yet they make up all the parts of writing my books that I absolutely adore. In this post, I’ll give you a run-down of several of my psychological suspense books, to show you what I mean when I say that each of my stories has a heart. And, for me at least, this heart often beats on well after typing the last sentence.

I’m going to begin with Show Me Dead, as it holds a very special place in my emotions. There was so much I fell in love with, the deeper I went into this novel. This was the first book in a brand new series linked by theme – and I had the opportunity to write as if no one was watching (which they weren’t)! I wanted a book full of Gothic-inspired atmosphere, which is why I set it almost exclusively in the catacombs of a dilapidated theatre. As I was writing, I had in mind a visual image of the entire book, scene by scene, almost as if I was watching an entire theatre performance myself (although, thankfully, I’ve never sat through performances that this one had to offer!). I imagined lights flickering, the dust in the air, the old and battered seats – and the terror on the stage. This book has been described as “claustrophobic”, and that’s exactly the atmosphere I was aiming for. Who wouldn’t want to escape from there – especially when the actors, themselves already captive, begin to go missing…?

I’ll refer to setting again later. But, as all readers know, characters are an endless source of fascination, and there are always some characters you love writing most as an author. As much as the tension and almost living dread in the walls of the setting of the catacombs of the theatre, I loved creating the characters. They felt very close, very special, to me, especially Angel, my main character, and the young girl, Pierette, who has also been held captive and terrified by the Puppet Master, for as long as she can remember. It was the vulnerability I found within them that made me care so much (and I genuinely, at times, cried for them; I can be a very emotional writer). And, ultimately, this drove me to dig deep and find what was at the heart of the strength they never knew they had. The journey from disempowerment to their own very particular kind of emancipation captivated me, and the characters of Show Me Dead continue to live on in my writer’s brain. I may even write more in their strange, terrifying world. If I do, then their emotions will play a huge part in finding the heart of the reason for the story, both theirs and mine.

Something similar happened with regard to character when I began writing That Killer Image, I knew almost instantly that I was going to love writing about Anthony, the completely obsessive photographer with only one objective: to capture what, to him, is the perfect image. Maybe, in a writerly way, I wanted to capture my own ‘perfect’ image of him as a dangerous man – more dangerous, as we discover, than anyone had realised before. But, as with all villains, he has his own motivations which, to him, make complete and logical sense, which is always what makes villains and antagonist characters so fascinating. His backstory is of immense importance here, as his present is haunted by his past, driven by the events which took place in his young life, and most importantly, how he felt and reacted emotionally and viscerally to them. There are times when he makes me feel incredibly emotional and sorry for him, yet these same incidents leave me completely terrified of this man. No surprise there – he’s a serial killer! And, the more I wrote his chapters, the more I realised he was an even darker character than even I expected him to be. That’s one of the challenges and the fun parts: the more you write about a character, the more you find out about them (even when you’re the one who invented them in the first place!).

Sometimes it is a theme combined with a sense of atmosphere which pulls me to a story, and it was the Gothic-inspired nature of everything about No Deadlier Time which held me captivated with this story from start to finish. At the heart of the book, it questions where reality ends and where fantasy born of a destructive mental state begins. It also questions something which is fundamental for me in my suspense literature: who or what is truly guilty and morally, as well as physically, culpable?

The book actually began life as a short horror story, which I weave into the book in monologue conversations my main character, Harry, has with his father. Harry blames his father for the dark past lurking in the house (and for something which happens there when he returns with his pregnant wife) which pull him into a terrible and deadly chain of events. I said I would return to setting, and in this book the house itself is at the very centre, and acts as a character in its own right, which I found fascinating. All the way through, I could picture the ancient, crumbling family home which sits on the edge of a cliff, isolated from the village full of deviants and criminals. Ravens live there and become integral to Harry’s declining mental state, infiltrating the landscape, his dreams – and the curse which the family, the house, and its grounds will not let die. There is a feeling of dark foreboding felt by the guilty and the innocent in this house – right to the terribly dark conclusion. I wonder who (or what) you would feel is the most guilty if you read this novel?

I’ll leave my Darker Minds novels now, and move onto a couple of standalone psychological suspense/thrillers. It may not come as a surprise, given what you’ve read so far, that I’ve always loved books with twists, and particularly with characters who have emotional-driven, dark and deep-rooted motivations. When I began writing Hers or Mine and delved further into the characters of paranoid and desperate wife, Lucy, and the enigmatic Charlotte, owner of a creative retreat where Lucy decides to spend time, I realised this was the kind of book I was going to write. It was clear immediately that there was so much more to these two women than met the eye. And there really is! This psychological suspense is a slow-burn by necessity. We have to get to know these characters (or at least think we know them), because each twist revolves around the characters themselves – their pasts which won’t stay buried, their actions, and in particular the deep-rooted, agonising and obsessively dark emotions which live within them and drive them to do… ah, no spoilers here!

Hers or Mine is also very much about relationships. Broken ones, betrayed ones, and ones that grow from a love tied to loyalty, gratitude and something much deeper than we could expect. So love in its many forms features heavily in this book, although there’s nothing straightforward about that, either. At its most pure, it brought tears to my eyes as the writer; at its worst it’s love which destroys people from the inside. Everything that happens to the characters in this story stems from their individual personal experiences, circumstances and feelings for someone else. It makes it as much of a psychological drama as it does a psychological suspense novel, and I truly loved writing it.

Indeed, during the two decades since my very first short story was published, I’ve been exploring the theme of love in my novels and short stories. What interests me most is the way different types of love are formed, and changed based on experience. And how sometimes it doesn’t change but becomes deeper, even darker, more obsessive and – potentially – dangerous. This danger could be to the one who holds such love in their heart, or to the object of this love. So I find it intriguing to explore the grey areas between innocence and guilt, and between heartfelt love and something that morphs into the (self-) destructive kind. I took this to the limits in my psychological suspense thriller, You Know You Shouldn’t.

Love with the darkest heart pervades this entire book from start to finish. A passionate (and, unknown to my protagonist, Eva, at the time, manipulative) relationship from the past leaves a shared history with a dark secret between her and the villain which affects the entire story. Obsessive love plays its part, too: it’s this obsession which is lethal, and which dictates the villain’s behaviour, leading Eva down a path which she realises too late that is affecting everyone she loves. Her emotions drive her, consume her, and undermine her, until she has no choice but to make (or struggle to make) some impossible decisions to try and keep her loved ones alive. Different forms of love become entangled, from the romantic to the co-dependent, to the familial, to the need to love oneself. Only this can stop a love that has gone so bad, so dangerous, that no one is safe. Such an intense, unpredictable and terrifying love was quite an experience to write.

What I hope is evident, then, is that the very heart of my psychological suspense, even the darkest ones, have at the very core feelings. My characters are very much driven by their emotions, whether, for example, because of a romantic relationship gone bad, or obsessions, desperation to get out of a situation, or loyalty and pure love. Feelings are by their very human nature, complex, and this complexity is what creates the twists and turns in the plots, as the characters themselves drive various actions due to how they feel. In a similar way, a reader’s feelings are extremely powerful, and for their own feelings to run amok as they become invested in the characters’ emotions, and in the psychological and emotional pull of settings which breathe life and darkness into a story is everything I sincerely hope for in a reading experience of one of my books. Reading itself is a feeling: one of being transported to the world of someone else and experiencing the events with them at a deep level (even if, in the case of my books, these events can get pretty dark, dangerous, and deadly). This is what I love about reading. And it’s what I ultimately love about writing,

You can find all the books listed above, and the stores where they are available for purchase, using the links below:

Show Me Dead

That Killer Image

No Deadlier Time

Hers or Mine

You Know You Shouldn’t

Books Make Perfect Christmas Presents

by Leave a Comment

I love Christmas shopping. Not the actual shopping – the food, and trying to figure out which socks are the right size, and did Great Aunty Helen actually already have a sandwich toaster? – because, to me, that’s an absolute nightmare. No, what I love is the atmosphere – the lights, the beautiful displays, the sound of carols and Christmas songs filterign through the air, the myriad smells of food cooking on the street stalls, the quirky gifts that you can find, especially those ones that have been lovingly created by a real human being, where you can tell that time and energy has been poured into them.

This latter is how I see books: one of the quirky gifts. The story itself has been created in the author’s head, then formed, layers added to build it into a narrative, its separate parts dovetailed then worked on until it has perfectly working joins, sanded into seamless storytelling, varnished and finally displayed in its own individual, beautiful form. How exciting is that – to be able to read the ideas that have been created in a writer’s imagination, and encapsulated in such a tangible form?! As you read this post, you’ll notice how much I value the opportunity of being able to give books at Christmas, as much as being a recipient of them.

My absolute favourite place to be at Christmastime is a bookshop. In truth, you’d be hard pushed to keep me out of them all year round, but there’s something extra cosy, extra exciting, about being there knowing I’m choosing something for a loved one to read. To me, giving a book is a more modern development of the tradition of oral storytelling. We all absorb story in many ways every day, from novels to conversations to adverts on the TV, and in many more ways, too. Instead of passing a story on to others around a fire, it’s become a physical (or digital, or audio) form that enables the recipient of the story to engage with their imagination on a deep level, and at their own pace. The book itself acts as a conduit between the author’s imagination and the reader’s innate desire for story. We need them to act as an overarching metaphor, a point of identity with a character or a situation, or with choices and consequences, to help make sense of our own lives.

As a voracious reader, I consume story in as many ways as possible. But I have to say that there is something special about holding a book in my hands, smelling the pages (yes, I do that!), leafing through the sheets and sheets that contain insights that I wouldn’t ever have been able to experience in the way that I do, had the invention of the printing press never come into existence. But, for me, the experience is magnified during the cold UK winter weather, as the rain batters on the bookshop windows and dusk becomes darkness outside. The bookshop becomes a haven, a cosy-lit home-from-home for book lovers. The place is wallpapered with bookshelves, carpeted with tables of new, bestselling and on-offer novels, and you can often sit and read the books you buy or – in some bookshops – before you do so. What I especially love is that the people around me are all there doing exactly the same as me, and chances are they’re as much of a bibliophile as I am!

I remember going into bookshops as a child, determined that I was going to:

a) buy everyone in my entire family a book to read for Christmas because I loved choosing the books, loved the secret shenanigans I got up to beforehand as I tried to discover which books in a series they’d already got and which they still needed, and because they were easy to wrap nicely(!), and

b) point out to the adult(s) with me which books I really thought were amazing, and stand looking longingly at them – surely someone would take the hint… (you can’t blame a book-obsessed girl for trying!).

What I have never forgotten, however, is the sheer wonder I experienced while taking the time to choose presents for my loved ones. My perusals which led to learning about so many more genres than I read myself at the time, elation at being surrounded by so many books in general and the shelves and shelves of Agatha Christie books in particular (my local branch of WH Smith at the time had an entire wall devoted to Christie novels), and the ultimate book-buying that connected us through a love of reading, even if that’s not what I realised I was doing at the time. A gift from one reader to another, for me, is something very special and personal. Nowadays, of course, we can choose to buy paperbacks and hardbacks, or gift e-books instead. We can even give people the opportunity of reading with their ears through audiobooks – something I wish I’d been able to offer up as presents for certain members of my family when I was a child. There really is something for everyone nowadays. And I truly think that’s wonderful.

If you are planning on buying books as Christmas presents this year, I hope you have as much fun doing it as I do. And if you open up your presents on Christmas Day and find that someone has taken the time to try and connect with your imagination through a story they think you’ll love, then you have, in my opinion, been given a gift that will keep on giving. It will give love to you every time you read it, or think about it, or when it inspires your own imagination or wish to devour more stories.

Our real lives revolve around the story we live every day. Not all of us are fortunate enough to be able to choose how that story plays out, either some or all of that time. So, at Christmastime, why not let someone you know have the enjoyment of living in their imaginations with the characters that authors have created for those who love the kinds of stories they offer up as gifts, so that we can lose ourselves in them? It might turn out to be the best gift you could ever give.

***

(It would be remiss of me – as an author – to not throw in a cheeky quick mention my own books here. If you’d like to see the ones I have on offer, you can find all my books here. Maybe you could stuff a loved one’s new reading device with e-books, or grab a paperback stocking filler for the suspense reader in your life.)

Would you like to get all my posts straight to your email inbox? You can subscribe to all my blog posts and news here: