GOT WRITE INTO TWISTED MINDS

Liz: It’s unnervingly easy to think like a sociopath

liz nugents

BEST-SELLING crime novelist Liz Nugent says she finds it ‘unnervingly easy to think like a sociopath’ when she is writing her books saying — ‘It’s like a performance for me’.

But the award-winning writer from Co Dublin insists ‘I’m no psychologist’ and instead revealed how her interest in sinister stories stems from observing the dark sides of society throughout her life.

“I have always found the psychology of characters fascinating,” she said. “And I think that’s why I write the books that I do.”

“I’m really interested in the psychology of people who do things in plain sight, particularly middle-class people who seem to get away with it a lot more, because they have this veneer of respectability.”

Asked if the dark subjects of her novels ever causes her stress or anxiety, Nugent said she has remarkable ability to enter the sinister headspace of her characters, hillary but mantel just as easily forget about it.

“There’s nothing that spooks me or causes me any angst after it...

“I always describe it, like, I grab the reader by the scruff of the neck in the opening line, and then I hold them for the entire length of the book, and then drop them like a stone at the very end... I inhabit the character.”

Menace

Speaking to RTE’s Joe Duffy on The Meaning of Life tomorrow, the writer goes on to give an insight into the dark side of humanity that underpins her characters.

She opens up about her childhood, growing up in a south Dublin home, which she felt “had a sense of menace” as it was broken into 11 times over the years.

Liz also reveals that on one occasion, she and her family were held at knifepoint by a “creepy neighbour.”