The Toronto International Festival of Authors (TIFA) is hosting MOTIVE, a crime and mystery literary festival from June 5 to 7 at Victoria College, UTSG. The festival, in its fifth year running, features events, panels, and signings from Canadian and international crime and mystery authors. This year’s lineup includes best-selling thriller author Shari Lapena. 

Lapena is the number one international bestselling author of nine thrillers, including The Couple Next Door, Everyone Here Is Lying, and She Didn’t See It Coming. This year also marks the 10-year anniversary of the publication of The Couple Next Door, which is about the disappearance of a couple’s baby while they’re at a dinner party next door, and the interpersonal tensions that the investigation reveals. 

The Varsity sat down with Lapena on Monday for an interview to discuss her career in thriller writing, and this year’s MOTIVE festival. 

The Varsity: The MOTIVE Festival has been running for five years now, is this year your first time at the festival?

Shari Lapena: It’s my fifth time this year, I’ve been every year since the festival started. I can’t even remember how many times we’ve done it at Victoria College, but that has been my favourite. I like the setting, it’s lovely there. 

TV: At your previous MOTIVE festivals, what stuck out to you about the festival that makes it unique? 

SL: I like that it’s set in Toronto, and it focuses on primarily Canadian crime writers. But it also has international guests who make the festival even more interesting. I think it’s really great for Toronto to finally have a crime festival. It’s fun, it’s very collegial, and there’s a lot of writers. 

TV: What events are you scheduled for this weekend? 

SL: I’m doing an event on Friday called Canada Bleeds. It’s myself and Margaret Cannon talking to Steven Beattie about Canadian crime fiction. Then I have the event on Sunday at 4:30 pm, which is a 10th anniversary party to celebrate The Couple Next Door. We will be having a few people reading from The Couple Next Door, and Nita Prose and I will be in discussion. She’s always good fun, so I think that will make for a fun event. I’m looking forward to a lot of the events at MOTIVE this year. 

TV: Are there a few events or authors that you’d like to highlight? 

SL: I’ve got so many! There’s Nita Prose in conversation with Clare Mackintosh, which I’m looking forward to. There are some Icelandic writers that I want to see, including Eva Björg Ægisdóttir. Usually I go to most things. I remember last year they had some amazing panels in the spy area, which I really enjoyed.

TV: Are spy thrillers one of your favorite subgenres?

SL: Yes! I don’t write spy thrillers, but I love to learn about them. My favorite spy series is the Mick Herron Slow Horses series. I do like my spy stuff, and psychological thrillers. There will be a lot of spy novelists at the festival, like Sam Bailey, Roz Nay, and Robyn Harding. I’m really looking forward to seeing Hannah Mary McKinnon, and Clare Mackintosh from England. It’ll be a good bunch. 

TV: Your first genre of writing was not thriller or mystery. Many readers might be unaware that you actually got your start in literary fiction. What made you choose to write mysteries and thrillers?

SL: Mystery and thriller are what I like to read the most. That’s what I grew up reading. I had started writing comedies and literary fiction because I don’t plot out books ahead of time, and I was under the misapprehension that to write a thriller you had to have a detailed outline. So I wrote my first couple of books without a plan, and then I thought, “well, I’ll just try writing a thriller that way without a plan,” and it worked out fine. That was The Couple Next Door! I spent a few years learning to write general fiction, and then by the time I decided to turn to crime I already knew the techniques and the craft. It didn’t take me very long to write The Couple Next Door, once I decided to try it. 

TV: Looking back at The Couple Next Door, was there something that inspired the book?

SL: Actually, yes, it was the Linwood Barclay book called No Time for Goodbye. I absolutely loved it. It was a domestic type of story, and I thought I could do something like that. The other thing I remember now, I was reading a book about the Lindbergh kidnapping, and that’s what made me think about doing a baby kidnapping. Also, I lived in a semi-detached house, and I had a baby monitor. I would not have gone next door with my baby monitor, but I’d heard of people doing that, so I thought, ‘What a great way to make the parents feel incredibly guilty and suspicious.’

TV: Foreshadowing as a writing technique is such a difficult thing to use successfully in mysteries, and I see it in your writing. Do you write foreshadowing after the fact, or as you go? 

SL: It’s all unconscious for me. I just write the story from beginning to end, and I realize as I’m writing, that my unconscious has planted a little seed here that’s flowering over there. All of those little clues and red herrings come up naturally when I’m writing, and I’m often surprised to see them there. 

TV: Yes, like in She Didn’t See It Coming, the cadaver dog was called Brutus, and I was like, “oh my gosh, it’s the best friend, isn’t it?” 

SL: I never thought of that. That’s the thing about the unconscious; it lays things down that you may not even notice. I love my Shakespeare too. In my new book coming out, there is a real Lady Macbeth-like slant to it, but a lot of people will miss it, because it’s not terribly overt. But people who like Shakespeare will pick up on it. I often have little allusions like that. 

TV: You are a writer of domestic thrillers. What is distinct to you about your characters in the domestic setting?

SL: I find the idea of someone you know holding secrets from you very interesting. I mean, I love spy thrillers, but I don’t really write that way. I’m more interested in the everyday person and all the horrible things that can happen to them. 

TV: I noticed a lot of psychological threads in She Didn’t See It Coming, but characters like Michael and Alice are left loose at the end. 

SL: That’s another little trademark of mine. I answer my central question: who killed the person? I always like to leave it a bit open-ended, because I feel like my characters live on after the book has ended. I like to think of them out there, still living their lives. 

TV: There’s so much room for secrets in these domestic settings, like a semi-detached or a condo or, in your newest, a brownstone. What role does the setting play in your novels? 

SL: To me, it’s really all about the relationships, but the setting definitely has a vibe to it. Especially in my new book, the brownstone almost becomes a character. The couple commits this murder in order to save their brownstone, because they have run out of money. It’s called Getting Away with Murder, it comes out July 28 in Canada and the US. Right off the bat, it opens with the murder. We know who did it, we know why they did it. What we don’t know is whether or not they’re going to get away with it. 

TV: If you could describe the book in three words, what would you choose?

SL: Greed, murder, morality. There’s a lot about morality in this book. Thematically it’s about inequality and income, and how there are elites who are very wealthy in Manhattan, and how they feel entitled to everything, even if it means killing someone to get more money.

Lapena can be found at MOTIVE this Friday, June 5, at Canada Bleeds, a panel on Canadian crime fiction taking place at 3:30 pm in Alumni Hall, at Victoria College. Lapena will also be attending the 10th anniversary celebration of The Couple Next Door on Sunday, June 7, at 4:30 pm in the Isabel Bader Theatre. Festival passes and the full weekend schedule, including a list of free events, are available on TIFA’s website. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.