Book Drunk: Blog Tour: Hidden by Emma Kavanagh.

Title: Hidden.
Author: Emma Kavanagh.
Publisher: Century.
Genre: Psychological Thriller.
Publication Date: April 23, 2015.

Purchase: Amazon UK

HE'S WATCHING

A gunman is stalking the wards of a local hospital. He's unidentified and dangerous, and has to be located. Urgently.

Police Firearms Officer Aden McCarthy is tasked with tracking him down. Still troubled by the shooting of a schoolboy, Aden is determined to make amends by finding the gunman - before it's too late.

SHE'S WAITING

To psychologist Imogen, hospital should be a place of healing and safety - both for her, and her young niece who's been recently admitted. She's heard about the gunman, but he has little to do with her. Or has he?

As time ticks down, no one knows who the gunman's next target will be. But he's there. Hiding in plain sight. Far closer than anyone thinks...

Location: Wales

I get asked a lot about the setting for my books, and why I have thus far chosen Wales as a home for my characters. Well, I’m going to be honest. I was late coming to an understanding of how important setting is. In my initial forays into writing, I operated under the assumption that setting just kind of happened, that it was simply where your characters were. As I began to develop as a writer, I started to realise that just wasn't enough. Location, when handled properly, can become another character, one whose influence can cast a shadow across all those involved.

As people, we are affected by our environment. We grow up a certain way in part because of our geographical location and the way that it has shaped our community.

Hidden is set in South Wales, with much of the action taking place in a now long gone hospital in Swansea. And yes, before anyone asks, I do realise that Mount Pleasant hospital no longer exists. However, in my experience, hospital administrations get snippy when you stage a mass shooting in their premises! Swansea is a reasonably populous city, with wide flung borders. Yet it still has a small town feel to it, and there remains a sense (at least amongst the general population) that the bad things that happen out in the world are unlikely to affect us here.

That, for me, is fascinating, both as a psychologist and an author. That sense of big-city crime meeting small town security. And in truth, whilst crimes happen in smaller numbers here, they do still happen. What then does that mean for those who live here? How much greater is that sense of shock, of trauma, when these big crimes hit?

But there’s another thing too, another reason why I have so far set my stories here. I am a storyteller. I have always been a storyteller. As a child, I would walk to school and en route I would tell myself stories in my head. They always happened on the streets that I walked. So how insane is it that now, decades later, I get to tell the rest of the world those stories, unfolding on those same streets that I walked as a child?

Finally, it’s Wales. We have sea, mountains, countryside and as many sheep as you could possibly want. Why wouldn't you set a story here?

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