Send Help
A survival horror / dark comedy about winning at any price.
Send Help is a survival horror. When an overlooked female office worker, in a male dominated workplace, survives a plane crash and wakes up on a Pacific island with her douchebag boss, she sees the opportunity to take revenge and regain control of her life.
The story combines office politics with the outdoors, island survival narrative. The tone is a mix of horror thriller and dark comedy. The comic element is critical in binding the story together. It adds an extra dimension to the story as well as providing a framework that excuses the plot extravagances as well as the protagonist’s dubious morality. In terms of the one line pitch it’s Cast Away meets Misery.
I enjoyed watching the film as a writer – seeing how the horror and dark comedy balanced and where the writers would take the story. The ending could have gone horribly wrong, but it manages to keep things together.
Slow Horses
Sidelined spies find self-worth and a shot at redemption.
Mick Herron’s 2010 novel Slow Horses is the first novel in a twelve book series. It’s also been adapted into a successful Apple TV series. If Len Deighton’s The Ipcress File is about class, Slow Horses is about misfits surviving work politics.
Where The Office poked fun at the workplace, Slow Horses explores it with a cynical dark humour. There’s an assortment of eccentric characters, including a disheveled departmental boss who eats heart-attack food, has disgusting personal habits, and throws in the occasional politically incorrect comment.
The key to the Slow Horses story is the character origin story and rooting for the underdog.
The Housemaid
An explosive psychological mystery with a twist.
Freida McFaddens’s The Housemaid is a tense psychological mystery with a great plot twist. It’s an accessible, fun read. The movie is out and it is equally entertaining.
The story plays with genre conventions – working with and also subverting them. It’s a fresh take on The Girl on the Train meets 90s psychological mysteries. There’s also a contemporary #metoo vibe.
The Dog Stars
A novel with a reassuring message for our troubled times.
Peter Heller’s The Dog Stars has that rare quality of combining a literary fiction feel with genre style action. The story is a thematic mix of the American outdoors and survivalism contextualised with the protagonist’s inner reflection and his search for personal meaning in a post-apocalyptic world. It’s also a canine companion story.
The audio book’s narration is really great (it’s read by Mark Deakins). The film adaptation of The Dog Stars is slated for an August 2026 release. The movie is directed by Ridley Scott.