Exploring the motive of a crime novel
Bad things can happen to anyone, anywhere, even in the seemingly benign, feel-good villages by the sea along Auckland’s East Coast Bays. Torbay, Browns Bay, Rothesay Bay … these coastal suburbs are seemingly on a slightly different setting to the rest of Auckland. Relaxed. Village-friendly. Understated. A place of ice-cream cones and Gold Cards.
But something happened some years back and has sat in a corner of my mind ever since.
When we lived in Dairy Flat, Browns Bay was a regular haunt for my family. The kids attended karate classes on the beach and piano lessons in the suburb. La Tropezienne was a favourite cafe for catch-ups, and Ike’s Emporium our first port of call for any birthday-party disguise. And when I worked as a GP in Waiake, I’d often pop down to the shops at lunchtime for sushi.
One such lunch hour, as I was stepping off the pavement to cross Clyde Road, a souped-up Holden came seemingly out of nowhere and tore down the high street at speed, just missing me. Appalled onlookers shook their heads and muttered. I was shaken up, but mostly indignant. Then someone mentioned seeing the car swerve into a carpark down the road. I took off, ready to confront the reckless driver.
As I rounded a corner, there he was, not 10 metres from me, climbing out of his dual-exhaust vehicle – a behemoth of a man.
My resolve wavered. But this was no time to back down; I would not be intimidated by someone who’d toyed so carelessly with my life.
As I approached him, I began to outline the dangers of his irresponsible driving.
The man tilted his head, his eyes growing wide, his face puce.
I said, "So, in future– "
He stepped towards me.
I held my ground.
"You fucking insect," he hollered, spittle spraying everywhere.
Something about being called an insect brought me to my senses. I took a step backwards. Then another.
He kept coming.
I turned tail and ran.
The man followed, his expletives getting louder, the content more unhinged.
Spotting Browns Bay Police Station on the corner, a building I’d never taken much notice of before, I darted across the road and through the front doors, only to find the desk unmanned.
Terrified and out of breath, I leant on the bell and prepared to vault the counter. Fortunately someone appeared from behind the one-way glass. Half-an-hour later, after the nearby streets had been scoured, a kind constable walked me to my car. My hands shook all the way home.
For a long time afterwards I felt anxious and on alert, as if I’d naively and foolishly skimmed too close to the edge.
Anxious in a coastal paradise…That was the tension I wanted to generate in my most recent crime novel, The Doctor’s Wife, a domestic thriller that sees the gradual, disturbing, and ultimately violent disintegration of a longstanding relationship between four close friends. The Andinos and the Lambs are people you might meet on any given day in an unassuming, middleclass suburb – a doctor, a freelance journalist, a pottery teacher, a doctor’s wife. They live in the East Coast Bays.
Though 20 years has elapsed since I was chased down Clyde Road, the incident had clearly lurked in my subconscious, because as I sat down to write my new novel, I very quickly settled on Browns Bay for the book’s backdrop.
Browns Bay – the picturesque, seaside suburb with a down-to-earth community, op shops, and bargain bins, and old-school medical practices. Huge houses with unhindered views of the sea, alongside far more humble dwellings. A home to families, immigrants, retirees. A place where discrepancies in class and wealth are perhaps more nuanced than in some other parts of Auckland, but where tensions nevertheless exist, tensions which surely go some way to shaping individuals and outcomes.
Browns Bay is also a suburb with impressive sandstone cliffs . . .
The Doctor’s Wife by Fiona Sussman (David Bateman, $37.99) is available in bookstores nationwide, and has constantly been on the bestseller list since it was published last year.
