Emma Kavanagh: 'I have always been interested in those people who seem to do the impossible'
BY Katie Smart
29th Mar 2022
We're delighted to welcome crime writer and police psychologist DrEmma Kavanagh to our teaching team, as the lead tutor of our upcoming online course: Writing Crime & Thrillers – Advanced. Emma has a PhD in cognitive psychology, and she worked for decades as a police and military psychologist, training firearms officers, command staff and military personnel on the psychology of life-threatening situations. Emma is the author of six mystery and crime/thriller novels including her highly acclaimed Wolf series, which includes To Catch a Killer and The Devil You Know (with a final book yet to come). Her first non-fiction bookHow to Be Broken was released in 2021.
We caught up with Emma to discover how her background in psychology informs her fiction and her advice for aspiring crime and thriller novelists...
You have a PhD in Psychology and worked for many years as a police and military psychologist. You specialise in how the brain functions under stress and in dangerous situations. How does your background in psychology help inform your novel-writing?
I see the world through psychological eyes – I can’t seem to help it. So much of my understanding of what is going on around me is based on what I know about the brain’s activities. Inevitably then, I use this in my writing. Early on in my career, this was a general trend, but, as I have grown more comfortable with who I am as an author, psychology has been pulled more into central focus. This was most true in The Devil You Know, when so much of the story unfolded by using psychological research as a plotting tool. This makes the nerd in me very happy indeed.
What first inspired you to use your extensive knowledge of psychology to write fiction?
I had fallen prey to the advice of ‘write what you know’. But I was young, and honest enough with myself to realise I didn’t really know much about anything at all. The unintended consequence of this well meant advice was that I stopped writing. That changed after about six years of working as a police and military psychologist. I was taking part in close protection training (that’s police speak for bodyguards) with a firearms team, and was sitting in the back of a car while the driver shot through the windscreen to the target beyond. It was…intense. And it was the moment when I realised I actually had things I could write about now. As an aside, I have now concluded write what you know is less than helpful. I would respectfully amend this advice to ‘write what you want to know more about and then go learn about it’. Which is why my most recent novel had me reading books on quantum physics…
Your novels often explore the minds of killers and those who investigate them – such as DS Alice Parr in To Catch a Killer and Isla Bell who dedicates her life to forensic psychology after finding three bodies as a teenager in The Killer on the Wall. Which characters do you find most interesting to write about, the criminals or the investigators?
I have always been the most interested in those people who seem to do the impossible. Who take on incredibly hard jobs and suffer and struggle and yet somehow work their way through. For me, whilst the criminal mind is always of interest, the most fascinating aspect of all is the normal people who find themselves in abnormal circumstances, and, somewhere in that, find the capacity to do extraordinary things.
When you’re working on a new idea for a novel what comes first – the crime or your lead detective?
It is often the crime. With my Wolf trilogy (To Catch a Killer, The Devil You Know and… wait and see!), I became fascinated with the notion of how we perceive others. We tend to think that our understanding of someone else’s behaviour is comprehensive. But in truth, we often see only what others want us to see. It occurred to me how powerful a weapon that could be in the wrong hands, and so Wolf was born.
You also write non-fiction, How to Be Broken was published in 2011 and your next title How to Love a Psychopath is to be published later this year. What are the differences in your approaches to writing fiction and non-fiction? Do you approach your research and the psychology in different ways?
Honestly, I often think non-fiction is easier to write. So much of my career has been dedicated to translating scientific research into something that can be easily understood and processed by my audience, and so non-fiction writing feel very similar to me. I learned early on that if you want to engage your audience with hard science, you have to deliver the facts through story. And that has served me well in constructing my non-fiction books.
What are some of your favourite recent crime and thriller novels?
Sadly my reading capacity has taken a massive hit of late. Long covid wiped out my capacity to engage with novels for a long time. When I feel like that though, I often reach for Agatha Christie. They’re obviously not new, but they are books whose plotting and cleverness bring me comfort when I’m struggling.
We’re delighted that you’re the tutor of our upcoming Writing Crime & Thrillers – Advanced course. What’s your favourite part of teaching creative writing?
I love teaching. I genuinely think it’s one of the greatest things you can choose to do with your time. I love bringing people into this world that I get to inhabit and introducing them to topics that fascinate and excite me. I also adore having the opportunity to see my students develop and grow. The most exciting part is watching them acquire the confidence that they can actually do this job.
If you could only pass on one piece of advice to aspiring novelists, what would you say?
Remember that every single experienced author was once where you stand now. Every author had to learn, to find their own voice, to gain the confidence to tell the stories they need to tell. And every author has heard no, likely far more often than they have heard yes. What differentiates the ones that grow to become established is that when they have licked their wounds from the no, they pick themselves back up again and keep searching for the yes.