“I first read the novel when I was 13 – maybe a bit too young,” she explained. After finishing Timekeeper and pondering what she wanted to write next, the author kept returning to her childhood memories of reading Rebecca. “Before I write my novels, I ask myself the question, ‘What would I want to read?’ and my stories take shape from those things I’m most passionate about,” explained Monir. In Suspicion, 17-year-old Imogen Rockford travels from New York to Rockford Manor, her family’s 18th-century English country estate and the site of her parents’ death in a mysterious fire, where she confronts long-buried secrets of her aristocratic roots as well as a supernatural power she cannot control. Unlike those included in her first two novels, the song Monir works into Suspicion was not of her own creation, but one that she happened to hear while writing the novel – and one that coincidentally has a strong connection with her late maternal grandmother, the prominent Iranian opera singer, Monir Vakili.Ī modern-day take on Rebecca, Suspicion was inspired by three of the 29-year-old author’s cultural passions: the gothic suspense novels of Daphne du Maurier, the psychological thriller films of Alfred Hitchcock, and the two-tiered class structure of Julian Fellowes’s Downton Abbey. As she did in her earlier YA novels, Timeless (2011) and Timekeeper (2013), the author incorporated song lyrics into her new book, which she then recorded and released.

Songwriter, recording artist, and novelist Alexandra Monir made a gratifying discovery while writing her latest romantic thriller, Suspicion, which Delacorte is releasing this month.

Suspicion by alexandra monir