Hodder & Stoughton signs McCreesh's debut

Hodder & Stoughton has acquired Cracked, the debut crime novel by Curtis Brown Creative course graduate Louise McCreesh.

Commissioning editor Eve Hall acquired world rights from Rebecca Ritchie at AM Heath. Publication is planned for February 2020.

The novel centres on Jenny Nilson, who finds herself implicated in the brutal murder of her former psychiatrist, Phillip Walton. He knew her darkest secrets, and the circumstances of his murder suggest that someone else out there knows them too. Jenny needs to speak to old friends, and old enemies, from her dark years spent at Hillside Psychiatric Hospital. Because they are the only ones who know what really happened at Hillside, about the secret that Phil kept for them all, and that this is not the first murder.

McCreesh, a freelance journalist, was offered a scholarship to continue work on this novel by the Curtis Brown Creative course.

She said: "I am so thrilled to be published by Hodder & Stoughton and to be working with Eve, who is amazing. I really can’t think of a better home for Cracked and am very grateful to the Hodder team for getting behind it."

Hall said: "Cracked completely got under my skin. Louise’s writing is so polished and sensitive, you are pulled along from the first page into a dark, disturbing world of secrets, twisted friendship and murder. In an increasingly crowded market Cracked moves the genre on to a new place and is a book you won’t forget."