Anna Sayburn Lane

Thriller author

book cover

Cover reveal: The Peacock Room

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And here it is! I’m delighted to share the cover for the new Helen Oddfellow mystery, THE PEACOCK ROOM, which will be published in October.

A literary obsession.

An angry young man with a gun.

And one woman trying to foil his deadly plan.

When Helen Oddfellow starts work as a lecturer in English literature, she’s hoping for a quiet life after the trauma and loss of her recent past. But trouble knows where to find her.

There’s something wrong with her new students. Their unhappiness seems to be linked to their flamboyant former tutor, Professor Petrarch Greenwood, who holds decadent parties in his beautiful Bloomsbury apartment.

When Helen is asked to take over his course on the Romantic poet William Blake, life and art start to show uncomfortable parallels. Disturbing poison pen letters lead down dark paths, until Helen is the only person standing between a lone gunman and a massacre.

As Helen knows only too well, even dead poets can be dangerous.

THE PEACOCK ROOM is the intriguing follow-up to the acclaimed 2018 mystery thriller UNLAWFUL THINGS, which introduced the London literary sleuth Helen Oddfellow.

Thanks to designer Jessica Bell for another great cover.

Judging a book by its cover

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Despite the advice not to, we do all judge books by their covers – how else are you to know whether a particular title is the type of book you love, or not your cup of tea? So getting the right cover for Unlawful Things was a big challenge for me.

I spent a lot of time hanging around libraries and book shops, looking at the shelves. Where would my book fit? What sort of covers did thrillers and mysteries have? What made one book stand out and catch my eye, while others barely registered?

There are clear conventions in book genres. Curly writing, pastel colours and idyllic settings or pretty illustrations spell romance. Stark, often brightly coloured text against a dark background, perhaps with a woman looking fearfully over her shoulder – psychological thrillers. I was after something that conveyed mystery, intrigue and a historical back story. I had a few ideas, including using the skulls on the graveyard gates where Marlowe is buried, and where some of the key scenes in the novel took place. I commissioned cover designer Jessica Bell.

After some discussion about the book and my ideas for the cover, Jessica sent me some options to choose between. One very spooky graveyard scene was particularly impressive – but after asking people what they thought, it was clear that it suggested a horror or ghost story. Good as the cover was, it promised the wrong thing. I asked Jessica to rejig an image from one of the other options, with a mysterious staircase – and she came up with this terrific cover, which I really love. I hope it intrigues you and makes you want to take a look inside – which, after all, is the only real way to judge a book.

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