The Missing Hours will go down in history as the book that pushed me to the edge of lunacy. Day after day, week after week, I would sit on "Mummy's work chair" muttering to myself that this book would be the death of me. I'm a planner. Those who know me, know this about me. When I write a book, I know where I'm coming from and I know where I'm heading to. I know who is going to be featured and what they have to contribute.
Emma Kavanagh
HA!
The Missing Hours spun this process entirely on its head.
For me, this book began with a what if. What if a woman were to vanish, only to return hours later with no recollection of where she has been? What could have filled those missing hours?
In truth, I began writing this book with little idea of where it would go. All I knew was that I had two children alone in a playground and a mother who had gone. My quest to understand Selena Cole very much mirrored the investigation of Leah. Who in the hell was this woman?
Then - because why have one crime when you can have two? - my second POV, Finn, finds a dead body. Which did not serve to complicate my plot at all!
So I'm trundling along, hoping like hell that at some point throughout this process I will figure out exactly what is going on. And all I know is that I have two investigations, into two seemingly unrelated events. That I have a third timeline that is crying out to me to fill it, but that I have not got the foggiest clue of what it should look like.
Seriously. I can show you my notebooks.
On multiple occasions, scrawled across the page is the word AARGH!
And then, somewhere along the way, both Leah and I uncovered the Cole Group. That was when things got really interesting.
During my years training police forces, I have done a lot of work with hostage negotiation teams. I have run exercises, stood in the pouring down rain as a hostage taker screams obscenities, attended real life negotiations. The skills required to do a job like that have always fascinated me. You have to be able to listen, to persuade. Sometimes you have to be able to lie. As I got to know Selena Cole, I started to realise that who she was was inextricably linked with her work in the kidnap and ransom industry.
For those who have not yet been introduced to this deep, dark world, the K&R industry houses a wealth of security operatives (often ex-police and military) whose job requires them to react when an individual covered by kidnap and ransom insurance is taken hostage. The people who work in this realm operate in some of the most dangerous areas of the world. They can be gone for weeks or months and can be charged with liaising with on the ground police forces or agencies or, in certain areas, will have to handle the negotiations themselves. It is an extremely dangerous career.
Now, a side note - I believe in research. I am OBSESSED with research. But the world of K&R is one of the most difficult ones I have ever investigated. It is hugely private, almost obsessively guarded, and with good reason. Secrecy is an asset in a world in which a hostages life depends on discretion.
I have been fortunate that across my career I have met many interesting people and some of those interesting people happen to work in the kidnap and ransom industry. And it was through them, and through their willingness to explain procedure to me, to talk about their own experiences and fears, that the Cole Group really began to take shape, and the murkiness of that third timeline began to clear.
I rarely pick favourites amongst my books. It feels wrong, like picking your favourite child (whichever one isn't yelling at me!). That said, I have to admit that writing the Cole Group case files was an absolute joy for me. Those sections of The Missing Hours seemed to write themselves.
The Missing Hours was, more than any other book I have ever written, a gigantic puzzle. It was also far more of a mystery to me than my other books have been, and therein I think lies my affection for it. It challenged me, pushed me to my limits. And, I'll tell you a secret…I had the biggest crush on Ed Cole, who, in my head, looked an awful lot like Tom Hardy. That helped.
