Page 52 - Phonebox Magazine August 2016

Writing ‘beach noir’ in Milton Keynes
Local Author Tracy Buchanan
When my publisher HarperCollins described my latest novel No Turning Back as ‘beach noir’, I had
to smile to myself. I love to set my novels in beachside locations, whether they’re on the ravished shores of Thailand after the 2004 tsunami or, as with No Turning Back, a quaint British seaside village.
And yet for most of my life, I’ve lived in or around Milton Keynes. Sure, we have beautiful
lakes and rivers here. But the closest we get to a beach in my house is the sandpit we got our daughter last week!
So the question I often get is why set my novels in seaside locations? And what speci cally is beach noir?
Ever since I was a child, I’ve loved visiting family in Worthing and that fed through to my writing. I could tell you it was my memories of eating ice cream on the pier or feeling the crisp air on my cheeks that drew me to writing about coastal towns. But what’s always fascinated me is the idea of seaside resorts that hide something sinister beneath the striped deckchairs and sound of children yelping with happiness as they run in and out of the sea.
And this is what the beach noir genre is all about. Like ‘domestic noir’, a label used to describe thrillers like Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train, No Turning Back presents a normal domestic setting – a mother walking her daughter along the beach – which is turned on its head when she’s attacked by
a teenager and kills him in self-defence. But what makes this different is the main crux of the novel is the tension between the public tourist face of the setting and the darker side as secrets begin to worm their way out.
And that’s why I’m happy to stay here in the MK area and not up sticks to the seaside any time soon. You never know what’s lurking beneath those sunny seaside pictures...
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52 Phonebox Magazine | August 2016
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