Amy Jordan, author of the gripping thriller, The Dark Hours, on how people drive our life stories and characters drive books . . .
When Sarah Weinman of the New York Times reviewed my international debut, The Dark Hours, just before its release in January 2025, I was thrilled of course, and most of all by the final sentence;
“She writes Julia with particular fire, bringing us a woman who has chosen invisibility but who cannot escape what once made her visible.”
It was exactly this that I hoped readers would take from the book. I wanted readers to enjoy The Dark Hours for its twisty plot and tense scenes, but also to find a character that was memorable. And Julia Harte, the retired detective at the centre of The Dark Hours, has found her place. Readers have contacted me expressing solidarity with Julia, frustration at some of her decisions, joy at how she represents them in so many ways and intrigue about her future. She is strong and determined and damaged. To readers, she is relatable.
Books are my life companions
Reading is one of my greatest joys. Books are my life companions, devoured as often as possible, and the most memorable takeaway when I close the cover is always the characters. If I don’t remember every facet of the plot, I always remember the stubborn detective, the quirky next-door neighbour, the fiercely loyal best friend, the dismissive colleague, the shy but brave heroine. Characters are something to hold onto when the plot twists and turns and stretches believability. They need to be dependable, and when they invite us into the story with them to solve the mystery, we should want to jump in and turn the pages long into the night. As readers, we love to find elements of our own friends and families among their personality traits. A memorable character makes a book feel real.
People drive our life stories and characters drive books.
While I don’t plan my books in great detail before I begin to write, I do have an overall vision for the book. For The Dark Hours, my aim was to write a thrilling police procedural with heart-stopping tension, and with an unforgettable character that would drive the plot. And in any successful page-turner, there has to be a hook. Something intriguing enough to entice an agent to request the full manuscript, a commissioning editor to keep reading and take it to acquisitions, and ultimately a reader to choose the book from a bookshop or library shelf. When I sat down to create Julia Harte, the hook came quickly, and when I first sent the synopsis and early chapters to agents, this was the hook I used to try to grab their attention:
The Dark Hours: the hook
“Two young friends have been brutally murdered. A third girl is missing. The best hope of finding her alive is a woman who wants to disappear.”
And Julia Harte is certainly a woman who wants to disappear.
I have spoken about how a chance conversation with a friend helped to shape the plot and Julia’s character. When telling my friend what Julia and her partner suffer early in the book, she remarked that she didn’t think she’d ever get over something like that. I wanted to explore what the impact of that night (no spoilers!) had on Julia and how it helped to shape who she became in the present-day timeline. But, of course, this event in itself was not enough to make her want to disappear from her life, her home, her friends.
Yet that is what she did. Five years before the current timeline in The Dark Hours, Julia Harte left her life in Cork and disappeared. Not completely; some people knew how to find her if they needed to. But she wanted to be alone, to leave the life she had craved behind.
Why would anyone do such a thing?
What happened throughout her career to propel her into this decision?
Book Two
This feels like the hook for book two. I want to go back into Julia’s past, into the career she loved, the promotions she fought for, the world she wanted to be part of. Because in exploring that lies the answers to why she became so visible and why she wanted to disappear.
Julia wrote an academic textbook, intended to be used for students and detectives. That book is full of the more memorable cases of her career. The darkest, most twisted crimes she helped to solve, where she fought the worst of humanity. It charts the rise in her career from junior garda to senior investigator. And it details all the ways in which her work eventually led to her desire to run away and seek peace in a remote corner of Ireland with her rescue dog.
It is in going back that I can truly explore what led to Julia becoming a woman who chooses invisibility. A woman who wants to disappear from her life to heal and find peace. It’s all there, in her book and in my head, waiting to be explored.
As I put the finishing touches on book two, I’m excited for readers to understand Julia Harte more and see the cases that shaped her from a young garda into a seasoned detective.
Some of her character traits have been there from the beginning, like her obsessive need to help, even when she’s walking right into the path of a killer.
(c) Amy Jordan
About The Dark Hours by Amy Jordan:
A SHOCKING CRIME
1994: Young Garda Julia Harte stumbles into the trap of a notorious serial killer. What happens that night in Cork will haunt her for the rest of her career.
A CONVICTED KILLER
Years later, Julia’s glittering police career is long behind her. James Cox, the vicious killer she helped catch, has long been incarcerated. But then news breaks that Cox has died. Within hours, the bodies of two young women are found brutally murdered – killed in the same way as his original victims.
A NEW NIGHTMARE
It’s happening again. Only this time, the stakes are higher. Julia must return to Cork to face not just a killer who’s taunting her, but the past she has tried so hard to bury.
‘Clever, immersive and utterly engrossing. The Dark Hours is a triumph.’ Andrew Mara
‘Dark, gripping and atmospheric…You won’t be able to put The Dark Hours down.’ Sam Blake
‘A relentlessly twisty one-sitting read.’ Catherine Ryan Howard
Order your copy online here.
And read more Meet the Authors of Crime Fiction on Writing.ie here.
