Lenny Marks Gets Away with Murder

By Kerryn Mayne
(St. Martin’s Press)

Interview by Diane Slocum

Lenny Marks’ life runs right on schedule. She teaches school but has little interaction with other teachers. Or anyone else. Having each part of her life separate keeps things simple and running smoothly. Then she gets a letter that starts to shake the walls she has built around her memories of her earlier life. To make matters more complex, she finally agrees to her foster mother’s insistence that she make friends. Her inability to interpret others leads her astray in more ways than one. But the unraveling of the memories and what follows changes her life completely.

AUTHORLINK: What was the first thought you had about this book? Did it always start with Lenny getting the letter?

MAYNE: I started with a character. I wanted one that would stay with the reader long after they’d finished turning pages and invented Lenny Marks before I thought up how her story would come about. The letter arriving was always going to be the catalyst; her old life meeting the present one. I also wanted it to reach her at the primary school which was a place of comfort and routine for Lenny (and of course had sticky beak side characters so it didn’t go unnoticed!)

AUTHORLINK: Was Lenny Marks Gets Away with Murder always your title or if not, what was the process to choose it?

MAYNE: No! Apparently, I’m not good at naming books – my second book has been renamed as well! I called it ‘The Almost Truths Of Lenny Marks’, but my Australian publisher (where it was released first) suggested the alternative, and current, title. I didn’t love it at first because I didn’t want to be a police officer writing about ‘getting away with murder’, but then it grew on me. I love it now and think it really draws attention. Goes to show that experienced publishers tend to know what they’re talking about! Not to mention I was heavily pregnant with twins when the title was being discussed and my willpower was lower than usual. I probably would’ve agreed to it being called just about anything.

AUTHORLINK: How did you organize your writing? Did you plan most of it ahead, or did it develop as you wrote?

MAYNE: I definitely have a development as I go sort of writing style. It’s not highly efficient, but I wanted to see where the story went before I sat down and workshopped it. I knew the start and I knew how it would end and so I just needed to fill in roughly 80,000 words in between. Every time I have tried to plot, I have gotten incredibly bored and distracted and then never looked back at my notes. I think I may be a ‘pantser’ for life.

AUTHORLINK: There is another character, Molly, in Nita Prose’s The Maid, who has many of the same ways of dealing with life as Lenny, and she becomes a murder suspect. What do you think is the appeal of a character like Lenny?

MAYNE: I know that I like reading about the underestimated people of the world and Molly the Maid and Lenny Marks are just that. Quiet, unremarkable sort of people… or are they? Seeing an innately good person triumph or find new strength is very satisfying. I like to call it ‘upkill’ – a portmanteau of uplifting and killing. I hope to have many more in me.

AUTHORLINK: How did your experience as a police officer help you with this story?

MAYNE: It did and it didn’t. I have been a police officer for 17 years and so my experiences and thoughts are tangled together with what I know, have seen, have learned through my career. But I am also very mindful that stories I have come across in the course of my duties are not mine to tell. I would hate for someone to read my writing and think they identify themselves in it. I do steal a lot of names from people I work with though, which is fun and a great way to get people you know to buy your books! As a side note, I hate writing from a police officer perspective. I get really bogged down in the procedure and the way things should be done and struggle to take fictional liberties to make it a more thrilling, entertaining ride. Safe to say you’re not likely to see a police procedural from me anytime soon.

AUTHORLINK: Especially as a police officer, how can you write a story with the idea of someone getting away with murder?

MAYNE: Lenny Marks Gets Away with Murder is definitely not a how-to guide! I should also note that despite my occupation, I have no foolproof ways of ‘getting away with murder’ (I mean, I have some ideas, but I’ll keep them to myself). I took a lot of fictional licence in creating the storyline in Lenny Marks and know that if some of my colleagues were on the job then the ending would have been very different!

AUTHORLINK: Tell us about your experience of getting your first novel published. How did you get an agent, then a publisher? What went well and what didn’t? What about the experience will help you with your next book? What else?

MAYNE: I was published in Australia first and was unagented when picked up by Penguin Random House. Just before Lenny Marks was released, I was offered a two-book deal with Penguin Random House Australia and I sought an agent at that time. I was lucky enough to find Elaine Spencer at the Knight Agency who took me on and very quickly found a home for Lenny Marks in the USA, with St Martins Press. I feel like things very much fell into place for me through the process of pitching, submitting and getting my books to publishers, but that luck also involved a lot of hard work. There’s so much information out there for writers and I tried to absorb as much of it as I could without getting overwhelmed.

Book two was under contract before the release of book one and I was writing Joy Moody Is Out Of Time with my newborn twins in the house. I think that meant that I didn’t focus so much on the pressure of book two, and just set about having a creative outlet in between feeds and nappy changes.

AUTHORLINK: What was your biggest challenge in writing this story? Your greatest joy?
MAYNE: I loved writing Lenny Marks, I felt like she just flowed onto the page. But I was very mindful that she not be someone that was laughed at, or presented as a true ‘victim’, despite the things that had happened to her. She was well and truly entitled to curl up and cry about her past, but I wanted (for the most part) that she just got up and go on with things. Of course, we have to do terrible things to our characters to give them a story arc, so it was never going to be all smooth sailing. It was challenging to make sure Lenny was fragile without being overly tragic.

The greatest joy was all the feedback I’ve received since writing Lenny Marks. One of the most incredible messages I got was from a teenage reader who said she has been bullied and is now home-schooled because she has always seemed different. She said that after reading Lenny Marks she had confidence that she would find her place in the world. I had no idea that my writing could have such a powerful impact. It’s been incredible.

 

AUTHORLINK: What are you working on next?

MAYNE: I have finished book two and hard at work on book three. Turns out that writing with two year-old twins in the house is harder than newborn twins! Joy Moody Is Out Of Time was released in Australia in February 2024 and will be out in North America in August 2025. It’s a story of motherhood and consequences set in a pink suburban laundromat. I love Joy and hope readers will too.

About the Author:

Kerry Mayne’s off-the-cuff remark about wanting to write while at a book club event with bestselling author Sally Hepworth who replied that she should give it a try was all it took for Mayne to do it. She is now the author of Lenny Marks Gets Away with Murder and Joy Moody Is Out of Time. Mayne has been a wedding photographer and is a police officer. She lives in the bayside suburbs of Melbourne with her husband and four children. Unlike her character, Lenny, she only owns 11 copies of The Hobbit.