In How to Make a Killing, Kate Weston’s characters believe that ‘sometimes to get to the top, you need to snap a few necks’.
The first episode of the reality show Selling Sunset starts with four women sitting on a sofa in the Oppenheim Group Real Estate Office in Hollywood, being told by twin CEOs Brett and Jason that a new woman is joining the team. The disdain for this interloper is palpable even before they’ve met her, with the biggest question being where she will sit. After all, the seating arrangement is reflective of hierarchy. Alpha agent Christine resolves the conversation in the end, by quipping, ‘She can sit on the floor until she proves herself’. Amongst constant calls from Brett and Jason for the women to ‘be nice’ it’s clear that the news has irked them all in their own way, leaving some of them looking (in my opinion) slightly murderous. And thus, the inspiration for my new book, How to Make a Killing was born.
I have two interests that form the basis of both, How to Make a Killing and my previous book, You May Now Kill the Bride; jealousy, and the complex way in which women interact with each other, particularly in group situations. The two things often being closely linked.
Female relationships can be fraught, they can be tense and turn on a knife edge. Things are taken to heart – both good and bad – and relationships and people are scrutinised and judged. But despite all of this – and sometimes because of it – female friendships are also wonderful. They’re honest and multifaceted. A complex case of high risk, high reward. And the friendships we make at work are often a kind of trauma bond, even without the threat of a serial killer hanging around, like it is for the women of Harringtons Estates in How to Make a Killing.
Offence Taken
In Selling Sunset, we see the agents going for lunch as a united front and bitching about their office mates one minute, then screaming at each other around an infinity pool over a bottle of Oppenheim branded wine the next. Such is the speed with which offence can be taken, and such is the competitive nature of a business where they’re selling lifestyles to envy. (Please, I beg, if anyone knows what Oppenheim wine actually tastes like, slip into my DMs and tell me.)
Much like the women of Selling Sunset, the women of How to Make a Killing will fight over anything from listings to personal slights. They’ll judge each other’s outfits, home lives and work ethic to make themselves feel better. But what’s really at the heart of it all – as with Selling Sunset – is jealousy. And most of that jealousy feels spurred on by the difference between the picture of ourselves that we put out into the world – on Instagram or in real life – and the reality.
To abuse the Cher from Clueless comparison; sometimes you realise someone’s life is ‘…a full on Monet. It’s like a painting, see? From far away, it’s ok, but up close, it’s a big old mess’. Up close you can see the brush strokes of people’s lives; the stress, the anxiety, the stains on the sofa. My characters are in a constant battle to keep up the façade, to stay relevant, and to make sure everyone is jealous of them.
As I approach forty, I’ve accepted jealousy as an unavoidable sort of evil, especially a world where we’ve got such easy access to other people’s lives and homes on social media. Jealousy may be ugly, but it’s also human, and it can be useful. Sometimes it can spur us on to get the things that others have, and we want. It can serve as a kind of booster or inspiration, and at a base level there’s nothing wrong with using it to drive you. How to Make a Killing is about what happens when we don’t stop at that base level. It’s about ambition and jealousy colliding and creating something far more sinister and dangerous than a green-eyed monster.
Savage, Desperate and Competitive
As with all my books, How to Make a Killing started with the characters. They are savage, desperate and competitive, but they’re women who come from a place of reality. I drove them to the absolute giddy limit and then I built a pressure cooker of an office around them. A workplace with constant irritations and competitive rivalries to bring out the worst in them. They’re a small team, because I wanted them to know everything about each other, and to feel suffocated by that knowledge. The more they know about each other, the more the jealousy can grow, like bacteria in a Petri dish taking over and straining at its walls.
One of the things I’ve always admired in other women is when they have the confidence to speak their mind. Women like Christine in Selling Sunset and Hannah in How to Make a Killing can get scorn for their bluntness, but I feel like there’s something admirable about choosing honesty over a false kindness. (I say this as a nervous people pleaser who is also somehow terrible at pleasing people and constantly worries that I might have upset or offended someone simply by existing.) In real life I sometimes find myself far more suspicious of constantly and faultlessly ‘nice’ people than of people who make the odd savage dig. What even is ‘nice’ anyway? And is that niceness real? Or is it a cover? And if it is, what’s it a cover for? What’s under your patio? Are your floorboards squeaky because the last person who crossed you now lives under them?
In How to Make a Killing I’ve created characters who are ‘nice’, characters who are driven, and characters that believe sometimes to get to the top, you need to snap a few necks.
(c) Kate Weston
About How to Make a Killing by Kate Weston:
Meet the women of Harrington Estates. They’re one big happy family. At least, that’s what they all say…
New arrival Bella is determined to get to the top, and she doesn’t mind stepping on some Louboutin-clad toes to get there.
No-nonsense Hannah was the rising star, but now Bella’s stealing her thunder – and her agent of the year award.
Olivia wants it all – the glittering career, the picture-perfect family. But lately it feels like something – or someone – is trying to snatch it away.
Then there’s poor Claire, who has lost more keys than sold properties – and Bella makes sure the whole office knows it.
When Bella is found dead at the open house for a £10-million mansion, everyone’s a suspect. They’d all die for that listing, after all.
But did one of them kill for it?
Fans of How to Kill Your Family and Selling Sunset will love this hilariously dark thriller from Kate Weston, with characters you’ll love to hate, vicious office politics, and a twist you’ll NEVER see coming.
Order your copy of How to Make a Killing online here.
And read more Meet the Authors of Crime Fiction on Writing.ie here.
