FAMILY SECRETS SIMMER
IN CT AUTHOR MEGAN COLLINS’ LATEST THRILLER
Megan Collins loves family secrets. In her first two books, the Manchester author explores family relationships but often through the eyes of one character whose family is splintered. In her third book, “The Family Plot,” published Aug. 17, Collins goes deeper and creates her richest book yet that digs deep into the dynamics of a whole family.
In the book, three adult children of the dysfunctional Lighthouse family come back to their childhood home on a remote island off the Rhode Island coast to bury their father. The children were raised by parents obsessed with true crime that fittingly named them Tate, Charlie, Dahlia and Andrew after famous murder victims: Sharon Tate, Charlie Lindbergh, the Black Dahlia and Andrew Borden. Opening up the family’s burial plot, they are stunned to find the grave meant for their father is already occupied. Not surprisingly, given their upbringing, each family member reacts in some pretty unusual ways. Disturbing secrets come to light and family bonds are tested.
“The one thing that was different about writing this book than my past books, which I find interesting, is that this is the first time that I was creating a full family,” Collins said. “All of my books so far have dealt with family issues and family dynamics but this was the first time that there were four siblings, a mom and a dad.”
“This was a really interesting challenge to try to bring in what are those sibling dynamics, especially when you have some that are much older than the other and then of course putting it in this backdrop of the crazy way they were raised,” she said.
Collins created fully dimensional characters that are haunted by their childhoods and wove interconnected narratives to show how each character evolved and why certain characters are connected. “I loved exploring the subtleties of those relationships and why certain people clung to each other and weren’t as close to other people, so it was a really rich experience for me writing it,” she said.
The inspiration for this book was also unique for the author and came out of the blue like a lightning bolt or gift from the story gods. “Usually my ideas start from a ‘What if’ question that really fascinates me and I can’t stop thinking about,” she said. “This time it all came from the title itself, which was a thing that my husband actually thought of as an idea for another project that I was working on. It wasn’t right for that at all, but I could not get this title out of my head.”
Collins knew this title would be the makings of a fascinating story. “One morning the idea just sort of leapt into my head that there’s this family and they are all returning as adults to bury their father and then they open up his burial plot and they find the remains of their long missing brother already in the grave,” she said. “Immediately I was in love with that premise but I didn’t know where it was going to go from there so I just sat with it for a little.”
The story of this family began to meld with the author’s own interest in true crime and she thought it would be fascinating to have this family, who had always been obsessed with true crime, suddenly get smack dab in the middle of a true crime themselves.
“Suddenly, it’s not just so fascinating anymore, it’s awful and it hurts and it’s scary,” she said.
Along the way, Collins lays down enough red herrings to keep readers guessing and following the plot through its twists and turns. Paraphrasing her favorite mystery writer Tana French, also an expert at red herrings, she says a red herring isn’t just about throwing off readers but offering glimpses into a character’s psyche.
“It’s really about showing where the narrator, the main character, is heading with this mystery and why she is looking at this clue in particular or thinking that this might be a clue instead of looking where something more obvious would be.”
What’s next up for the author? She is now hard at work writing her fourth book, tentatively titled “Thicker Than Water,” which is actually the book her husband suggested The Family Plot as a title for.
“It’s about these two really close sisters-in-law whose bond is tested for the first time when the man that connects them is the suspect of this very highprofile murder,” she said. “One of them starts to doubt while the other maintains that he could not have done it.”
For more information about Megan Collins, visit megancollins.com.