LEXI LANDSMAN

Growing up in South Africa, Landsman’s grandmother shared a horrific story about a relative’s abduction, planting the seed for what is now her second novel, the thriller The Perfect Couple (Bantam Australia).

The Perfect Couple is, genrewise, very different from your debut novel, 2016’s The Ties That Bind. Why did you change your style so completely?

When I set out to write The Perfect Couple I intended on writing another family drama so I was surprised when I handed over the first draft to my publisher and was told that the psychological slant and plot twists I’d used to explore the breakdown of a seemingly perfect marriage had pushed it into domestic noir. Although the style is vastly different from my first book, it does share some commonalities in that it delves into family dynamics, secrets, lies and betrayal.

You had a child after your debut novel was released, then began writing your second. How did you juggle that?

I wrote The Perfect Couple under a tight deadline of nine months—a fitting timeline as I was pregnant with my first child! I wrote as much as I could before my son was born but only got halfway. Writing the remainder with a newborn in tow proved to be an interesting challenge. I had to be very creative not only in what I wrote, but in how I wrote. There were many days where I typed while my son slept on my lap, and nights where I wrote from 3 AM between feeds.

What sort of research did you do for The Perfect Couple?

The research areas were broad and varied, spanning archaeology, memory loss, 18th-century European history, the San Gennaro treasure, the Italian Carabinieri and missing persons’ cases.

What inspired the novel?

My grandmother’s sister-in-law was abducted in South Africa in 1982 and held for ransom. She endured 18 hours of terror and violence, but somehow managed to use her skills as a psychologist to talk her

abductor into releasing her. The criminal was jailed and later extradited to the US on a prior murder charge. Recovery from the event required my relative to dwell on trauma, and she went on to dedicate her career to working with victims of trauma. I was in awe of her resilience and inspired to write a story that centres on a kidnap for ransom. The novel began to come together when I posed the question: “What would happen if memory was all that stood between life and death, and forgetting meant losing everything?”