I am delighted toĀ share a guest post today ~ thanks to Rachel’s Random Resources for organizing.
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Genre ~ thriller
Publication date ~ April 6, 2023
Author Content Warning: Suicide (referred to in the past)
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Laura discusses her inspiration behind Hazard Nights ā¤µ
āIt struck Eve how much institutions like Cleeve have become part of the English collective unconscious: whatever one thinks of them, everyone inherently knows what they are likeā¦ā
Cleeve College, the setting for HAZARD NIGHT, boasts everything we associate with the public school system. Itās a bastion of privilege, as beautiful as itās (apparently) impregnable, a place of velvety lawns and aged brick, arcane ritual and male entitlement. Private schools are the hot button topic du jour: two thirds of the Tory cabinet went to one, yet the āold boysā (and girls) network is neither as powerful nor prestigious as it used to be. Increasingly, schools like Cleeve are the punchline to a sour joke.
HAZARD NIGHT is a crime thriller, not a polemic. If youāre writing dark academia, you have to believe in the allure of the institution youāve set your misdeeds in. The reader needs to be a little seduced, despite themselves. And Cleeve is inspired by a place I knew very well: between the ages of eighteen and twenty three, I spent every summer at a famous boarding school, working at an English Language camp for foreign teens.
The students, of course, were off on their holidays, yet the life of the school went on without them. I was able to observe a self-contained, close-knit community who lived as well as worked on the campus all year round. It had its own class system, social life, infrastructure and rules. I think most of the people there took pride in their work and enjoyed the sense of kinship that comes from campus life. But I did wonder what it must be like to join this as an outsider; someone who might be ambivalent about the public school system, and who missed the independence of life outside the bubble. This is why HAZARD NIGHT is a boarding school thriller in which the two main protagonists are neither students or staff. One is the frustrated wife of a housemaster; the other is the daughter of the college chaplain, who has spent her whole life cloistered with hundreds of posh teenage boys.
I once met someone who was one of only three girls in an all-male school. She joined the sixth form because her parents were teachers there. āWhat is it like?ā I asked her, awed. She gave a shrug of infinite weariness. āWell, the only thing the boys ever talk about is wankingā¦ā
I thought of this encounter when I decided to introduce girls into my fictional
establishment ā when the book opens, Cleeve has recently made its sixth-form co-ed. The old guard are horrified. Theyāre also out of touch: for many people, single-sex education is now seen as backward and old fashioned. I myself went to an all-girlsā boarding school, which, unlike Cleeve, was utterly lacking in glamour; it was a no-frills, antiquated institution that was so unpopular the school governors had to shut the boarding part down, half-way through my education. I remember all-too well the febrile atmosphere of unhappy teenage girls cooped up together, with little to do but plot and gossip, pursue vendettas and nurse grudges. If a handful of boys had been abruptly introduced into the mix, would the environment have been healthier ā¦ or more dangerous?
Cleeve College is a privileged place. It is also revealed to be a dangerous one. Itās a self-contained world where the inhabitantsā frustrations and fixations are covered over by a veneer of gilded charm. And even though it only exists within the pages of my book, it feels the most ārealā location Iāve ever written.
Book blurb:
Cleeve College is not for everyone…
When Eve’s husband is appointed housemaster at his old boarding school, Cleeve College, she gives up her life in London to join him. But the isolation and loss of autonomy threaten both her happiness and her marriage.
The arrival of Fen, an enigmatic artist and wife of the new Classics teacher, is a welcome distraction. Fen doesn’t play by the rules, and she and Eve enter into a game of escalating dares, disrupting the delicate balance of school life.
Then, the morning after Hazard Night, a tradition that allows the students to run wild and play pranks for one day, a body is found. Someone has been murdered. And it seems everyone has something to hide…
Purchase Link – https://shorturl.at/cMPS6
Author Bio ā Laura Vaughan grew up in rural Wales. She got her first book deal aged twenty-two and spent several years working in publishing, followed by a behind-the-scenes role at English National Ballet. She lives in South London with her husband and two children. Hazard Night is her third novel for adults.
Social Media Links ā https://twitter.com/CorvusBooks
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