The first Shari Lapena novel I picked up was The Couple Next Door back in 2019. It had been a long time since I had read a book I couldn’t put down. As in her other thrillers, the descriptions of psychological dynamics within families and between friends and neighbors remain unparalleled. The idyllic suburban setting becomes a veneer to be pierced, revealing secrets and sins of characters who at first seem like everyone’s favorite neighbors. Published in 2016, The Couple Next Door instantly hit the New York Times Best Sellers list and became the highest selling novel of the year in Canada. Lapena has since hit the best sellers lists several times and her name is firmly etched among the top thriller authors today.
Lapena first achieved her dream of becoming a published author while working as a teacher, penning two humorous literary novels, Things Go Flying (2008) and Happiness Economics (2011). Both books did well critically, the latter earning a nomination for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour. After struggling to complete a third literary novel, Lapena tried her hand at a thriller—a tale that would challenge all the clichés of suburban life. On the evening of October 27, 2015, she sent an email to a literary agent she’d never met, with an electronic copy of the novel. Within twelve hours, the agent expressed interest, and within two weeks every major publishing house in New York wanted to publish The Couple Next Door.
Lapena’s five thrillers to date are in-depth studies of the contradictory nature of suburbs, which in the author’s world breed a muted claustrophobia, where individualism and, surprisingly, humanity are blunted, and which are replete with adultery, social climbers, artificiality, and unconscious boredom. Her characters are often ordinary people contending with extraordinary circumstances, usually as a result of their own indiscretions or pathological behavior. After a fast-paced, twist-filled trip into the conflicted lives of the upper middle class, Lapena probes the depths of these characters’ reasoning, but most importantly, forces us to ask pertinent questions about the direction of our own lives.
AFG: Tell us about your latest novel, Not a Happy Family.
SL: In Not a Happy Family, a very wealthy older couple is violently murdered in their own home, sometime after a rather acrimonious Easter dinner with their adult children. All of the children expect to inherit millions. They are all better off now that their parents are dead. Except—now they are the prime suspects. There were problems in the family, which they kept very much to themselves. Fred Merton had been a very successful businessman—but he might also have been a psychopath. Perhaps one or more of his children have taken after him in that respect. Or perhaps there are others who wanted the Mertons dead. As they fall under suspicion, the Merton offspring all have things to hide, and the siblings begin to suspect each other of the worst. And yet, someone has done them all a favor, so there is a silent complicity there as well. Their old rivalries and resentments come to the surface, and they and those closest to them begin to doubt everything they thought they knew.
I wrote this story because I wanted to explore the complicated relationships between adult siblings, which really drive this story. I also wanted to explore the relationship between parents and their adult children—how these parents really felt about their own children, and how these children felt about their parents; how they had disappointed each other. I love a good murder mystery, with lots of viable suspects, knowing that any one of them might have done it, and having to write the story to the end to find out who. And I love the collateral damage done to the other characters in the story—for instance, the spouses who begin to suspect their partner might be a cold-blooded murderer.
AFG: When you initially wrote The Couple Next Door, did you have any idea it would be so popular?
SL: No, not at all. In fact, I didn’t have a lot of confidence about writing a thriller. I had written a couple of books that were comedies, but I’d always wanted to write a thriller. It’s what I love to read. But I was afraid to try it because of the plotting. Thrillers have to have very strong and complicated plots, but I’m not a planner—I simply make the book up as I go along, and I thought that wasn’t possible for a thriller. But I had this idea for The Couple Next Door—a couple going next door for dinner and leaving the baby behind and taking only the baby monitor with them—and I thought it was a really strong idea. So, I decided to try and write it without a plan. I
didn’t tell anyone I was writing it, not even my husband. I find writing in secret very liberating. Anyway, I just made it up as I went, and it turned out to have a really strong plot. I really surprised myself in the writing of it, and then I was even more surprised at the reception it had. I got an agent for it in less than twenty-four hours, and she sold it in a pre-empt really quickly, and then it sold all over the world. It was a huge seller. I feel incredibly lucky.
AFG: In a publishing landscape with so many psychological and domestic suspense novels, how have you managed to distinguish yourself?
SL: It is difficult to stand out these days when there are so many psychological suspense novels out there. And so many good ones! I think my trademark is my fast-paced writing style. The one thing I hear over and over again from readers is that they couldn’t put my book down. I love that. I think that, more than anything, distinguishes my writing. 
AFG: You mentioned that you’re not a planner when you write, so I have to ask, is that fast-paced style achieved in the first drafts, or do you perfect it when you are doing your own editing and getting rid of the parts you think are slowing down the plot?
SL: A bit of both, actually. My first drafts really move along. That’s just the way I write—I want to find out what’s going to happen. Then in editing, we sharpen it even more, to get the maximum tension and pacing. My editors do have me cut things. But I’ve never been one to write with a lot of filler.
AFG: So, since you’re not an outliner, what is your method?
SL: Sometimes I wish I could outline because I think it might make things easier. But I’m just not built that way. I’ve tried to outline a thriller from start to finish and I can never come up with anything. What I do instead is to start with an incident or idea that really grabs me, with a couple of characters that I know next to nothing about, and simply begin and see what they do and say. As I write, things just seem to take off. The characters take me in different directions and drive the plot forward.
AFG: Who are some of the authors who have influenced you?
SL: So many! I started off as a child reading Nancy Drew mysteries, then graduated to Agatha Christie, Josephine Tey, Daphne du Maurier, Ruth Rendell, and Patricia Highsmith, to name a few. They’ve all inspired me. And there are so many great suspense writers working today that inspire me as well— Ruth Ware, Lisa Jewell, Louise Candlish, Gilly Macmillan, Liz Nugent, Gillian Flynn, Laura McHugh—I could go on and on.
AFG: I loved The Couple Next Door. It had this minimalist feel to it, almost as if you had deliberately cut out many extraneous details that other authors would include and instead focused on panic and relationships. That was a gutsy move!
SL: Yes, it’s a very lean book. No excess at all. That was deliberate. When I sat down to write The Couple Next Door, it really was an experiment for me. All I knew was that I wanted to write a thriller that was a page-turner. And I think that’s part of it, there’s no padding in it whatsoever.
(For the complete interview, you can order your copy below:)
Order Issue 64 with Tennessee Williams, Jo Nesbo, and Shari Lapena.