Today’s featured author is Kellye Garrett, whose latest thriller, Missing White Woman, explores popular domestic suspense tropes from the perspective of a woman who feels she doesn’t belong.
In the interview to follow, Kellye and I talk about the new book, Missing White Woman syndrome, her writing habits, and much more.
Keep reading to solve the case.
Connect with Kellye on Instagram, Facebook, and her website. Grab a copy of Missing White Woman here.
Hi Kellye, thanks so much for joining! Your latest novel, Missing White Woman, is a thriller following a woman on vacation, who wakes up to find a body in her rental home and her boyfriend gone. Caught in the middle of a media-famous missing person case, Bree sets out to find the truth. What do you love about Bree’s character? What elements of her personality make her a tenacious investigator—even when she’s thrown into the role by accident?
Hi Manon! First, thanks for inviting me for this interview. I’m excited. Missing White Woman is my fourth book and Bree is by far the most vulnerable main character that I’ve written. When we meet her, her life has been on “pause” for ten years because she was wrongly convicted of having drugs in her car after her junior year of college. She never graduated, still lives in the same studio apartment as college and even has the same low paying job.
In terms of her personality, I think it’s her loyalty to her boyfriend and her stubbornness that drive her throughout the book. She knows that Ty had nothing to do with Janelle’s disappearance and she’s hardheaded enough to make sure the rest of the world (wide web) knows as well.
The narrative—and the book’s title—refers to “missing white woman syndrome,” a term used to describe the disproportionate media attention given to missing-person cases involving white women compared to men or women of color. What, do you think, makes the thriller genre a suitable vehicle through which to explore and discuss this phenomenon? What do you hope readers take away from Bree’s story?
The missing woman has been a domestic suspense trope since Gillian Flynn decided to name her third book Gone Girl. But Missing White Woman syndrome existed years before that book was even an idea. The only thing that’s changed since Laci Peterson went missing in 2002 is the internet has made us all think we’re investigators.
Our rising obsession with true crime has been good and bad. On one hand, it’s removed the media from being gatekeepers of what we know and care about. However, it’s also further turned people’s pain into entertainment. And that’s what I wanted to explore in this book—how something you’re making assumptions or even jokes about online is actually someone’s real life.
You have another suspense novel, Like a Sister, and write the Detective by Day series. Can you speak about the writing process for any of these other books? How did you approach writing a thriller like Missing White Woman, versus a lighter mystery like the Detective by Day books?
I’m a writer who hates writing so I’m a huge outliner. The blank page scares me so I used to have a safety blanket of 30-page single-spaced outlines for my Detective by Day books. I’ve evolved since then. I’ll always have some idea of the bigger twists and reveals and, of course, the ending. But I’ve started just figuring out how to get to those twists in what’s called the headlight method—you just outline what you can see in your headlights, so smaller chunks.
Your background is varied, from writing for television, serving as a magazine editor, and now, working in media. How has your career influenced your work as a writer? Are there elements of any of your jobs that have especially impacted your author career?
I’ve indeed had a lot of different jobs but the common thread has always been writing. To be honest, I had so many different careers because I was too afraid to write a book, which has been my dream since I was five. I’d like to think I’ve learned at least one thing from each (and wasn’t just wasting my time). For example, being a journalist taught me about research and how people speak. And television writing taught me about how each scene must move the story along whether you’re introducing a character, sharing key information or planting something that will come into play later. It’s also why I end each chapter on a climatic moment. On the flipside, TV writing is also why I struggle with description. You don’t need to explain how a room looks since the viewer will literally see it for themselves.
Lastly, what’s on your horizon? Do you have any future books to tease, and/or anything else you’re looking forward to?
I’m trying to figure out my next full length book idea aka the “Wait, how do you write an entire book again?” phase. I’m all over the place with it. In better news, I do have my first-ever short story coming out this fall. It’s an Amazon Original that’s part of their amateur detective collection. My story is about women taking part in a $50,000 extreme hide-n-seek challenge at the second largest mall in the U.S. The game’s being filmed by a huge YouTube influencer (think MrBeast). When someone tries to kill the influencer, my MC has to figure out what’s going on.
Thanks so much to Kellye for the interview. Sleuths, I hope you enjoyed it! If you aren’t already subscribed, please be sure to sign up for the Cluesletter and get author features like this alongside other mystery goodies, delivered to your inbox every other Tuesday.