Dark thriller is fresh success story for Bisphams author

Andrew Hatch, 33, dipped into fiction writing for the first time when he was a 19-year-old student.

His first published novel, ‘This Little Dark Place’, by Serpent’s Tail, will come to bookshops in October.

The thriller follows the story of a couple, Dan and Victoria, whose relationship takes a turn for the worse as they try for a baby. Lonely and desperate, Dan strikes up a friendship with a woman called Ruby, who is doing time in prison.

But everything changes when Ruby shows up at the couple’s door. Andrew, who lived on Ashfield Road, Bispham, and now lives in South London, said: “Years and years ago I had the idea to write a story in the form of letters. The form drove the idea, and the plot came after that.

“I had always had the idea to write a dark story about a young couple whose relationship goes wrong, and how that can drive a person to make extremely bad decisions, and the consequences of that. I just followed the rabbit hole down until I got to a very dark end product. For the last four or five years I have held this objective of trying to get a book deal, and now it feels like a massive weight has been lifted.”