Darby Kane Talks Toxic Relationships, Legal Expertise, and Vigilante Justice (and a GIVEAWAY!)

with Tessa Wegert

Former trial attorney turned #1 international bestseller Darby Kane has brought us Pretty Little Wife, The Replacement Wife, The Last Invitation, The Engagement Party, and now, What the Wife Knew. Not only has she mastered domestic suspense, but she also writes romantic suspense with a good dose of humor under her real name HelenKay Dimon (watch for The Usual Family Mahem in March of 2025).

What the Wife Knew is out now!

Wealth, privilege, family drama, homicidal mania…What the Wife Knew feels tailor-made for fans of The Perfect Couple and flawlessly aligns with your history of crafting larger-than-life stories. So tell us: How did you come up with the idea for this one, and what inspired you to develop main character Addison?

First, thank you! I love the comparison to The Perfect Couple. I just watched the television series and it’s unhinged in the best possible way. There’s something about peeking in on a toxic relationship and seeing all the inner workings of something so unhealthy that’s insanely interesting to me. Probably has something to do with my previous career as a divorce lawyer.

I always ask myself the same question when writing a thriller: what was this character’s worst moment and should they be defined by it? There isn’t one right answer, of course. Readers and I don’t always agree. How we tackle the question likely depends on how “bad” that moment is and how much we, in a society, can tolerate, but perceptions differ.

What The Wife Knew let me dive into this messy mix of secrets, revenge, angry women, found family, and vigilante justice. Those are common elements in my domestic thrillers, but here I got to explore them in a different way. The book pits a supposed national hero (the husband, Richmond) against a strong, morally murky woman who wants to ruin him (second wife, Addison). This is not a love match. They want to destroy each other. She wants to dismantle everything he’s built. He’s desperate to keep his secrets. The whole book looks at the idea of people acting one way in public versus another way in private then peels back layer after layer to reveal the who, how, what, and why.

Addison is my favorite thriller character of all I’ve written (so far). She’s sarcastic and has this hard protective shell. She uses humor to hide her true feelings. Underneath the one-liners and thick survivor shield, she’s been damaged by her upbringing and by having her life weaponized. She’s trying to work around the disaster that’s been dumped on her, all while pretending she’s fine. She’s not fine! And how relatable is that?

Addison’s life and choices are extreme because of a situation created by other people. But the idea of being torn between wanting a healthy family support system and being saddled with something else feels universal. I wanted her to downplay and compartmentalize and fight back but still ache for a very different type of life. Delivering that message in Addison’s voice was so much fun for me.

You used to work as an attorney, and your legal expertise sometimes finds its way into your books. How large of a role does your past career play in your current one, particularly when it comes to plotting?

My former career sneaks its way into my thrillers in big and small ways. As a former trial attorney, I have a basic idea of how legal things work or at least can identify if I’ve stumbled over something I should look up or find an expert to ask.

Really though, the biggest impact has been in how I create characters. All my books are fiction, but I did have an opportunity to see people in real time tense and sometimes dangerous situations where the things that mattered the most to them were on the line. With that tension, people aren’t at their best. They’re angry or grieving and those emotions impact their choices. Also, how they react is often shaped by who they were pre-marriage and everything that’s happened in their lives. Usually the cases didn’t involve murder…but sometimes they did.

Whenever I’m creating characters I think about how to make them feel like real people acting under pressure. That means allowing them to make bad decisions and be imperfect. I think (hope!) that spending all that time with people in diverse situations and with different levels of personal strength and pain in the legal world helps me to create characters that are complex and three-dimensional and sometimes fail.

One of the things I adore about your thrillers is the way they subvert expectations…for example, What the Wife Knew transforms the trope of the predatory second wife and reenacts the classic revenge story with a surprising group of players. Do you set out to turn literary conventions on their heads, or do you discover those opportunities as you write?

I love that part of writing! Let’s face it, there are a lot of nasty people in fictional marriages. I’ve read fantastic thrillers where the husband is terrible or the wife is, or the nanny is, or some third party is stalking the couple. There are all sorts of combinations and plots surrounding the family unit. With Addison, I had the opportunity to write a second wife in a slightly different way. She absolutely destroyed her husband’s first marriage but not because she wanted to be the newest Mrs. Dougherty. She hates being the newest Mrs. Dougherty. The marriage is part of a nefarious plan, and she has a good reason to unleash this plan, but having her smash any idea of romance and replace it with anger let me vent a bit as I wrote her. And who doesn’t love writing about a pissed-off woman who has good reason to be pissed off and is very adept at staying on task?

Like all of your thrillers, What the Wife Knew is the very definition of bingeable: Fast-paced and twisty with crisp dialogue. I’m wondering how much of the momentum we experience as readers is related to your writing process. Do you draft in feverish bursts that translate as energy on the page, or does the magic happen during edits?

I’m going to re-read this question every time I hit that point in the book where I wonder how I’ve ever written a chapter before. It’s amazing how that white noise in our heads can derail us. Thank you.

I love hearing about how other writers get words on the page. My process is messy. Be warned before you read on…so often an author will talk about their first draft being done or how they write without revising as they go (fast draft) and I’m completely flummoxed. I don’t really get what any of that means because when I finish a book I’ve already revised it a billion times along the way. Drafts? Nope. I finish that last chapter, polish, and revise it a few times, and I’m pretty much done with the book. I do another full read and off to my editor it goes. And I really never want to see it again because I finish writing in a wild, brain-draining frenzy.

That might sound like a clean process (except for the frenzy part). It’s not. Basically, I start with the equivalent of back cover copy. This is one of the benefits of working with the same editor for years. I pitch a book based on a few paragraphs and she either likes it or doesn’t. That’s also a downfall because when I get the greenlight all I have to go on is those few paragraphs and I’m supposed to make that into a book? Uh-huh, sure.

I work on a whiteboard in my office and use a notebook next to my computer to jot down ideas about setting, character, and plot. I then write the first three or so chapters and the revising starts. I’ll rework those initial chapters, sometimes for weeks, until I get a feel for the book. That’s what it takes to get the plot pieces and the voices in my head and be able to write forward.

Basically, the first hundred pages is an “I’ve forgotten how to do this” and “this really sucks” slog. Pages 50 to 90ish kill me every single time. Somewhere around page 100 the book tends to fall into my head (or start to). The dialogue runs through my mind all the time. Yes, I know how scary that sounds. My poor husband. I’m also constantly thinking of “things” to check and to add and writing notes and sending myself emails. I’m thinking about what chapters I need to write in the future and setting up chapter pages with a few bullet points on each so I know what goes next when I get there.

When I reach that point it becomes a race. It’s like my brain wants to purge the story. I feel like I’m fighting to get it down as fast as possible and setting new typo records as I go. Is it the strangest process? Yes. But I come from a family of coal miners and factory workers, so I know how lucky I am to have this messy writing gig for a living.

We're all about the thrills here at Thriller Thursday. What has thrilled you lately?

Have you all watched the TV series Disclaimer? It’s based on a book by Renee Knight. I bought the book because of the series. The acting is amazing but how the show is written (I’m assuming the book is the same way) is extraordinary. The craft of it is a master class. The way narration and perspective are used is eye-opening. And there is a final scene between the wife and husband that has a line in it about forgiveness that is so well done I can’t get it out of my head. That’s great writing!

What are you reading?

I’m reading Cross My Heart by Megan Collins. Her books always deliver for me. This one is about a toxic obsession. Count me in!

I just read a debut that comes out next year and I’ll go ahead and plug it so everyone can preorder it, You Are Fatally Invited by Ande Pliego. I was tired and having pre-election stress and read this even though my concentration level was not great for reading. Then I got sucked in. It’s a locked-room thriller and smart and so fast. People will be talking about this one in early 2025.

Question for our readers. Answer in the comments for a chance to win a signed copy of What the Wife Knew!

Darby’s question: I tend to write thrillers that have a component of vigilante justice. The book silently asks how far is too far. So…how far is too far? Is your idea of justice black and white? Is there a line, like X is okay and Y is bad? As a lawyer I thought I had a pretty strict code but I actually see life as a lot more gray these days. Maybe getting older does that. Not sure.

Congratulations to Lacey W. who won the free signed copy of Alex Segura’s ALTER EGO by answering last week’s Question of the Week!