Holly Jackson: ‘Obviously, I love murder

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Holly Jackson: ‘Obviously, I love *******

Holly Jackson

Holly’s debut novel A Good Girl’s Guide to ******* has been turned into a series for the BBC

Bestselling author Holly Jackson shares her secrets for plotting a modern ******* mystery – and explains how true ****** has influenced her.

For the author of A Good Girl’s Guide to *******, the process of writing a whodunnit is as meticulous as investigating a ******.

“I am obsessive about it,” she says. “I don’t quite have a ‘******* board’ because it’s not on the wall, but it is on the floor.”

Each scene in one of Holly’s books corresponds to an index card, which is then carefully placed into columns for each act in the story. The author admits this “does rather take over the room”.

While this is great for planning a storyline, Holly says opening her office door a “bit too ferociously” can literally ***** her plot out of place.

A Good Girl’s Guide to ******* follows plucky heroine Pip Fitz-Amobi as she investigates a closed ******* case. Pip soon finds a co-detective in Ravi Singh, whose brother was implicated in the ******.

Each clue, twist and turn in the story has been thoroughly discussed by Holly’s fans on TikTok; the hashtag for A Good Girl’s Guide to ******* – #agggtm – has more than 58,000 posts.

And

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by lead writer Poppy Cogan, with Holly serving as executive producer.

The Guardian called the series a “very modern Nancy Drew,” with fans on TikTok praising the show, stitching their reactions with clips from the new series.

The BBC spoke to Holly about the process of writing her hit novel. “Obviously, I love *******,” she says, “fictional *******.”

‘I need true ****** in my ears’

Holly, 31, from Buckinghamshire, published her debut in 2019. She won a British Book Award the following year and has sold millions of copies around the world.

While her fiction fits into the young ****** category, Holly does not shy away from heavier topics, like ******. Her first novel, for example, follows the disappearance and apparent ******* of a school girl.

And Holly says true ****** content – like the podcast Serial – became a “very useful” tool when writing A Good Girl’s Guide to *******. The structure of the book feels like a podcast, Holly says, adding: “We have transcripts of dialogue the whole time.”

In the sequel to Holly’s first book – called Good Girl, Bad Blood – Pip even creates a true ****** podcast herself.

And Holly says this research tool soon seeped into her real-life. “I can’t really do anything without a true ****** podcast,” she says. “If I’m walking the dog or washing the dishes, I need true ****** in my ears.”

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In the last ten years, true ****** series have won international acclaim: Serial won a Peabody Award in 2015 and In The Dark – a long-form investigative journalism series – became the first podcast to win a George Polk Award in 2019. And, according to The New York Times, Serial has had more 705m downloads.

Even Holly is curious why ****** is such a popular source of entertainment.

“Especially with young women,” she wonders, “is that like, an instinct in us that’s trying to protect ourselves?”

Georgia Hardstark is the co-host of My Favorite *******, a US podcast that looks into historic and modern cases, with one episode covering the Dancing Plague of 1518 and the Paper Bag *******.

For Georgia, part of the reason she is so interested in true ****** is that it helps her feel less “paranoid” and validates her anxieties about life, she explains.

“That is at the forefront of my mind, constantly, you know, ‘What’s around the next corner? Are my doors locked?'”

‘I know who the ********* is’

For Holly, the line between fact and fiction is clearly drawn: unlike true ****** cases, she always knows “the ending before I even write the first sentence”.

“I knew from the get-go who the ********* was going to be, this whole setup,” she says. “The slightly more complicated thing is not working out the mystery – it’s working out how Pip is going to solve the mystery.”

In A Good Girl’s Guide to *******, for example, Pip uses her Extended Project Qualification – an accreditation where a student independently researches a given topic – to interview suspects and keep track of clues for the case.

BBC/Moonage/Sally Mais

The story centres on Pip Fitz-Amobi (played by Emma Myers, left) who investigates a closed ******* case with the help of Ravi Singh (Zain Iqbal, right)

While Holly uses true ****** as a “jumping off” point for research, she notes the content, often used as a source of entertainment, is “obviously, about real life people’s trauma”.

Jessica Jarlvi – a “Scandi-noir” writer and lecturer on the University of Cambridge’s ****** and Thriller Writing course – says things like true ****** podcasts risk sensationalising these events.

“It just puts me off,” she says, “whereas in fiction, you don’t have to worry about that.”

In Georgia’s view, however, ignoring real-life ****** – often with women victims – “is to sweep it under the rug”.

‘I don’t have passive readers’

Modern ****** readers are “becoming more and more demanding”, Jessica adds.

Holly agrees: “I don’t have those passive readers, I have the really active ones who are looking to solve the mystery.”

On TikTok, fans of A Good Girl’s Guide to ******* share videos with their predictions and suspect lists as they read along with the book.

In one video, a reader guides people on how to annotate the book to keep track, colour co-ordinating sections into “clues” and “conflicts”.

“It makes me have to up my game a bit more,” Holly says.

Wondering how to watch A Good Girl’s Guide to *******? You can stream the series on

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#Holly #Jackson #love #*******

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