"New Yorkers don't look up. We see more in one day than most people will see in a lifetime. If you want to make us look, you have to do something special. Today, however, we stopped and stared like tourists. The sky pool was pretty special, even when there wasn't a body floating in it."
And so begins bestselling Irish author Edel Coffey’s propulsive new psychological thriller "In Glass Houses," a clever exploration of power and privilege in wealthy New York society.
20 years after the Juliet Fox case destroyed her career, journalist Eddie cannot resist returning to Manhattan’s elite when a new luxury tower rises beside the crime scene.
But dangerous people still guard their secrets, and someone will kill to keep their truth buried.
The opening image of the swimming pool, "eleven metres of shimmering perspex slung across the sky between the buildings" is a powerful one; "some days the people flowing in the pool look like exotic fish in a giant aquarium. And others, eerily like corpses floating motionless midair."
Garnering rave reviews, "In Glass Houses" is Edel’s third novel, following her debut "Breaking Point," which was an Irish number one and won best crime novel at the Irish Book Awards, and her second novel "In Her Place," which also hit the number one slot in the Irish charts.
A journalist and broadcaster, Edel has worked as a presenter and reporter with RTÉ Radio, as editor of the Irish Independent Weekend Magazine, and book editor of the Irish Independent.
Inequality and the multifaceted factors at play in how people’s lives turn out is a common theme in Edel Coffey’s work, and her latest book provides some thought-provoking social commentary.
“I can't write without writing about injustice and class, particularly, mainly because like a lot of people of my generation, I think I've shifted class… I grew up working class, very little money in the '80s and '90s. And then through free education and getting a career, have moved into a very middle-class setting. I find it so interesting to experience the two different settings and the differences in your life and the difference in how you feel. Feeling so much more empowered because you know that if something goes wrong, you might have a buffer zone where when you're working class, you don't have that buffer zone. There's an ongoing layer of stress that I think never goes away. It's part of my makeup now.”
Edel was speaking to writers Kate Durrant and Michelle McDonagh on books podcast Natter with Kate and Michelle, produced in association with Bookstation, Ireland’s fastest growing and best value bookseller, and IrishCentral, your daily source for all things Irish.
When thinking of an idea for her new book, Edel was inspired by an old, unsolved murder that happened near the area where she grew up. The murderer was never caught, and she often wondered who they were and how they lived with what they had done.
She comments: “I’m always very intrigued by how you justify a really bad deed to yourself because I think everybody thinks of themselves as a really good person who does the right thing until doing the right thing actually costs something or until there's a certain amount of pressure on you and you have a choice to do the right thing or the wrong thing. So I was really intrigued by that sort of moral setting.
"And then I wanted to put an extra layer on top of that, which was if you discovered something about the person you love, like something heinous, that they'd done something awful in their past, could you forgive it? Would you protect them? How far would you go to protect them?”
As well as moral ambiguity, Edel wanted to examine the different moralities that, in her mind, exist in different classes.
“So you've got the morality of somebody really wealthy doing something bad. What happens to them? You know, they have access to the best lawyers, they have access to money, they have access to a network of people who they all went to college with, and those people are probably in quite powerful positions. So they might have different outcomes if they do something wrong than somebody with none of those resources.
"Again, I'm thinking about somebody who doesn't have money, doesn't have an education, doesn't have access to that network. And so I really wanted to explore those two moral outcomes in this book.”
As well as writing, reading is a huge part of Edel’s life, and she has described it as "pure pleasure and the quickest escape route from a bad day." While she says she doesn’t worry for the future of literature, she does worry "for the future of people if we stop reading stories."
“I think literature will always exist because I think it's a human impulse to tell a story… Conversations are stories. Everything is a story. Advertising is a story. We sell things by telling stories. It's an innate human quality, I think, and that's why I don't worry about the future of literature. I do worry that if we can't actually read a book, if we can't get to the end of a long form essay or story, then we are actually really missing out ….and I do think we are certainly in a period of change around literature and literacy, particularly amongst younger people.”
Listen to Edel Coffy on Natter with Kate and Michelle here:
You can buy Edel’s new book "In Glass Houses" now on Bookstation.ie.
Listen to Edel’s interview on Natter with Kate and Michelle now at Acast, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can follow Natter with Kate and Michelle on Instagram and Facebook.
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