Jo Beckett by Meg Gardiner

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People ask me what my new novel's about. It's a thriller set in San Francisco, I tell them. The heroine's Jo Beckett, a forensic psychiatrist. It's The Dirty Secrets Club.

These people then give me a look. Dirty secrets, they say - how much do you know about that? Those years you lived near San Francisco, what kind of crazy things did you get up to?

I can't talk them out of the look, no matter how many times I explain that novels are fiction. They nod, and say: Of course you invented the club. For the book. Sure you did.

Then, with the same expression of disbelief, they say: a forensic psychiatrist. Did you make that one up? Does the job actually exist?

Absolutely.

Jo Beckett performs psychological autopsies to determine whether equivocal deaths are suicide, accident, or murder. When the police can't determine the manner in which somebody has died, she's the one they call. She's the last hope in puzzling cases. She's a deadshrinker.

And her job is very real. A forensic psychiatrist doesn't open up victims' bodies, but their lives. She digs into people's passions, secrets, and obsessions to find out what has killed them. Her territory is the psyche and the human heart.

And in the story, Jo's back is up against it. She's faced with a series of high-profile deaths that seem to be murder-suicides. A-listers are dying every forty-eight hours and taking people with them. Jo has to find out why, before the next San Francisco celebrity goes down and takes innocent bystanders along.

As for Jo herself, she's a California girl. She's young, athletic, a San Francisco native. She loves taquitos, hates earthquakes, and thinks rock climbing is a great way to relax.

And she's like a lot of psychiatrists. They're among the most intensely curious people around. They love learning about almost everything. To them the world is endlessly captivating. Many, like Jo, are also board-certified in neurology. And they've chosen psychiatry as their medical specialty because they can think of nothing in the world more fascinating than the human mind.

Forensic psychiatrists find their work important and rewarding. Their job is to find the truth in ambiguous cases - those cases that have left the police frustrated and victims' families baffled in their grief. They uncover the reasons why a troubling death has occurred. They find the truth that lies hidden, or lingers in the shadows, or sits ignored in front of everybody's eyes. As part of their training they generally spend time working in prisons, which you'd better believe strips away any illusions they have about human nature. They can't afford to be gullible. In their work they listen to what people tell them with "a high index of suspicion." But while they have to be tough and hardheaded, they also need to be compassionate.

They also love watching The Sopranos.

Last month, Kirkus's Mystery and Thriller Review called Jo a "rock climber, monkey wrangler, and confessor extraordinaire." I loved that.

I know doctors who do serious rock climbing - for fun. To unwind. After a long week in the ER or working with a mobile crisis team, they'll pack their gear, drive four hours, and spend the weekend hundreds of feet up a sheer cliff-face, daring the rock to throw them the valley floor below. Jo's one of them: For her, "fun" translates as adrenaline rush.

And her life is complicated, even before the deaths in the Dirty Secrets Club test her to the limit. She has a hypochondriac neighbor who pesters her for advice. A search and rescue expert wants to take her to dinner. But she's still recovering from the death her husband, and doesn't feel ready for a new romance, or even to face her own history. She might be a confessor, but she doesn't want to talk about her own secrets.

As for the monkey-wrangling, you'll have to find out about that for yourselves.

View more information on The Dirty Secrets Club

Meg Gardiner, The Dirty Secrets Club, San Francisco, murder, Jo Beckett, forensic psychiatrist, Stephen King, thriller, Penguin Books, books