Kavanagh to explore what love means to psychopaths for Trapeze

Crime writer and police psychologist Dr Emma Kavanagh is embarking on a study on what love means to a psychopath for her non-fiction debut with Trapeze.

Publishing director Francesca Pathak, who already publishes Kavanagh on the Orion fiction list, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights to How to Love a Psychopath from Camilla Bolton at Darley Anderson, and plans are afoot for a tie-in podcast.

Kavanagh is launching her own study in collaboration with the academic staff at Cardiff Institute into what it means to love a psychopath. According to Trapeze, her research resulted in identifying a new group, "those with psychopathic traits who we come across in everyday life". Triggered by a discussion with a friend in a deeply unhappy marriage with a man who "seemed to display alarming psychopathic tendencies", she began to wonder, how many of us are in fact the partners, children, or employees of subclinical psychopaths?

In How to Love a Psychopath, Kavanagh will be looking into the question of what love means to a psychopath. Can they love? And can they be loved?

Pathak said: "I love working with Emma on her brilliant novels, and this felt like such a natural next step. The research she is undertaking for this project is incredibly exciting and we have big plans for her at Orion and Trapeze – we are looking at a multimedia publication plan with a tie-in podcast and see the sky as the limit for Emma and this book."

Kavanagh said: "The thing I have missed most since leaving academia is the opportunity to learn something brand new, and beginning this research is an amazing chance to do just that. There is so much fascinating information within the academic world about the psychopaths we surround ourselves with, and this book gives me the opportunity to share that story with the wider reading public, and to add something entirely new to it myself. Extending my writing into non-fiction, under the steady hands of Orion and Trapeze is an absolute privilege."

Trapeze will be publishing How to Love a Psychopath in 2022, with Orion Fiction publishing Kavanagh’s latest novel, The Devil You Know, on 28th May 2020.

Readers interested in being involved in Dr Kavanagh's research study can contact the author on dremmakavanagh@gmail.com to find out more.