A Quickie with Vicky Newham

Tell me about your latest book and why we should read it?

Turn a Blind Eye is the first in a new police procedural series set in multi-cultural East London. DI Maya Rahman returns home from her brother’s funeral and is plunged into a high-profile murder investigation when the headteacher of a local school is found strangled. The killer leaves a card by the body, on which a Buddhist precept is scrawled: I shall abstain from taking the ungiven. Set in a community where secrets and prejudice are part of daily life, Maya has to solve the riddle before the killer takes another victim. The book offers readers a window onto life in East London while giving them a traditional puzzle to solve.

If someone was to write your life story what would the title be?

Still Not Great at Adulting.

What’s the strangest fan question or request you’ve received?

Hmm. Don’t think I’ve had anything strange yet. Have I got that to look forward to?

If you could co-write with anyone in the world (alive or dead) who would it be?

Ooh. I’d love to co-write with Jed Mercurio (Line of Duty) or M. J. Arlidge (Eeny Meeny and TV), because they’re both brilliant at suspense.

Tell me something nobody else knows about you (yet!).

OK, but promise you won’t tell anyone? I used to live in a shared house and Johnny Vegas was pals with one of my house-mates. He’d often come round, and would make us laugh while we were cooking. In fact, we took him to his first stand-up gig at the King’s Head in Crouch End.

Finally, please recommend 3 books that you have recently read and tell me why you’ve chosen these.

I’ve just finished Paul Finch’s Kiss of Death, which is a high-octane read with a spectacular ending. Before that, I tore through Harlan Coben’s Don’t Let Go, which has the most amazing cliff-hangers at the end of each chapter. I interspersed this with On Brick Lane by Rachel Lichtenstein, which I was reading as research for the second DI Rahman novel. I find it fascinating how communities have settled in this part of London and moved on, all leaving their mark.

Who is Vicky Newham? Vicky Newham grew up in West Sussex. She studied languages at university in London and then embarked on a series of business ventures which were great fun and fabulous experience. Some years later, she returned to university to study psychology which she then taught for 10 years.

Vicky is the author of the DI Maya Rahman police procedural series which is set in multi-cultural East London. The first book, TURN A BLIND EYE, is currently available in ebook and hardback, and paperback later in 2018. The second, OUT OF THE ASHES, will be published on April 4th 2019.

Vicky has drawn on her psychology background and her experiences of living and working in East London to write the books in the series. She moved to Whitstable, Kent in 2013 where she now lives with her cockerpoo dog.

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