Human behaviour analyst turned author Lesley McEvoy publishes her 5th novel. (Image: Express – supplied.)
If anyone knows exactly how the twisted mind of a serial killer works it is Lesley McEvoy and her alter ego, fictional forensic psychologist, Jo McCready. The behavioural analyst, profiler and psychotherapist turned crime author spent 25 years analysing human behaviour patterns. Her work brought her into contact with some of Britain’s most deranged and dangerous killers in some of the UK’s most notorious prisons.
Among the real-life killers she profiled for the Once Upon A True Crime TV series, in which crime authors investigate the real-life murders that inspired their novels, was Babes in the Wood murderer Russell Bishop, convicted of killing nine-year-old schoolgirls Karen Hadaway and Nicola Fellows in 1986 near Brighton.
Lesley’s fifth novel, The Corpse Light, published today, follows her main character, forensic psychologist Jo McCready as she unravels another disturbing case. Once again the story is set in Lesley’s beloved native Yorkshire; her crime thrillers are much-loved by northern booksellers and customers alike.
Set in a fictional city based on Bradford, much of McCready comes from Lesley’s own experiences.
“I like to think of her as a younger, smarter, fitter avatar of me”, she laughs. “I am not a forensic psychologist like her and it is important to make that distinction but I had to make her that in order for her to have access to that criminal world.
Twisted ‘Babes in the Wood’ killer Russell Bishop, was profiled by Lesley McEvoy. (Image: PA)
“I am a behavioural analyst and psychotherapist, but like her I was freelance with my own therapy practice, but much of my work has been in the corporate world. I do always say though there are as many psychopaths in big business as there are in prisons.”
Forensic psychologists are generally involved with the assessment and treatment of criminal behaviour. They work with prisoners and offenders, as well as police and other professionals involved in the judicial and penal systems.
However Lesley had also been doing some work with charities in London helping drug addicts and the homeless, many of whom had been in the prison system, when she was first asked to help train prison officers in trying to get a better understanding of their behaviour.
“I was asked by a nurse who worked in Strangeways who felt prison staff might benefit from my insights into human behaviour,” she explains.
The request opened the tightly locked doors of some of Britain’s Category A prisons for Lesley including “Monster Mansion” Wakefield Prison in her native Yorkshire.
The Corpse Light by Lesley McEvoy has fellow crime writer Ian Rankin’s seal of approval. (Image: Express – supplied)
Recalling that first visit, she says: “I remember it feeling very intimidating going into Strangeways for the first time, all those men cat calling. I remember one prisoner asking me if I’d ever met a murderer before and when I said I hadn’t he said, ‘Well you have now’, but of course you don’t ask them what they’ve done.
“During those visits I found out what prison smells like, the noises, the clanging of keys and the slamming of doors, how it feels so claustrophobic in there, like being in a submarine, especially for the maximum security prisoners who are kept in a prison within a prison. I might not have worked on a one-to-one basis with Britain’s best known killers but I have walked the same corridors as them, I have seen them and I have spoken with the prison staff who have to look after them. All these experiences help to add texture and authenticity to my books.”
On one visit to a maximum security prison Lesley came across a notorious child killer.
“You can tell what level of offender someone is by the number of prison guards flanking them and he came in with four,” she says. “I was there to talk to a group of prisoners about how their own behaviour affects prisoner officers’ behaviour towards them and other prisoners around them.
“I sort of recognised him but he looked very different and had put on a lot of weight and it was clear he had been attacked in there. He just kept staring and smiling at me, trying to charm me, which was very unnerving, but that is what psychopaths do of course.”
“Afterwards I asked who he was and when I was told who it was, it made me shudder, sent a shiver down my spine.”
Inside Pentonville. Lesley’s work took her inside many of the UK’s prisons. (Image: Getty Images)
Lesley’s first novel The Murder Mile was published in 2019 and was almost 40 years in the writing. “I remember being asked at school aged five what I wanted to be when I grew up and I said a writer,” she recalls. “I was told by some horrible old teacher that people like me read books and didn’t write them.
“I wish that teacher was still alive today so I could send her my books! I had been writing that book off and on forever but life kept getting in the way, I got married, had children, got divorced and had a mortgage to pay and a whole other career. Let’s just say I was coming up to a very big birthday when I was finally published!”
In her twenties, Lesley tried writing historical romances but when she discovered crime fiction she knew that was what she wanted to do.
“They say you should write what you know and human behaviour is what I know,” she says. “I was often involved in recruitment for big businesses who were actually looking for people with psychopathic tendencies, people who wouldn’t lose any sleep firing people, people without much empathy who could do what other people didn’t want to.”
The Murder Mile was followed by The Killing Song (2021), A Deadly Likeness (2023) and The Invisible Dead, published last year. The Corpse Light comes out today, and another one is in the pipeline for next year.
“I have to write one a year now!” laughs Lesley.” My books always come out at the end of July, just ahead of Yorkshire Day on August 1st.”
In The Corpse Light, a young woman is left for dead while walking the Yorkshire moors and a local man is found murdered at a landfill site. The reader is asked to consider what do these seemingly unconnected crimes have in common?
Forensic profiler Jo McCready is brought in by DCI Callum Ferguson to find out. But Jo has a secret. Local gangster and prison inmate, Chris McGarry, knows the dead man and wants revenge. He also has leverage on Jo, and as the investigation intensifies, he presses her to pass on police information.
Again it is here where Lesley’s insider knowledge about prisoners shines through. Which is why fellow crime writer Ian Rankin, possibly the Godfather of the genre, has said the writer “really knows her stuff”.
Lesley met Rankin at the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival. He offered to read her first, then unpublished book, The Murder Mile, and showed it to his agent.
“After wanting to be a writer for 40 years it finally happened,” she says of the life-changing moment. “I didn’t think Ian would even read the book and I still can’t quite believe I have a seat at the table having been pressing my nose against the glass for so long.”
Lesley recently profiled the Gallagher brothers for a biography about the warring pair. (Image: William Lailey / SWNS)
The mother of two grown-up sons and a grandmother now, has recently remarried and moved from her beloved Yorkshire to Manchester.
And away from her own writing she recently used her profiling skills on the Oasis brothers, Noel and Liam, whose infamous love-hate relationship is the stuff of pop legend. She was helping fellow writer PJ Harrison with his recently published book ‘Gallagher: The Fall And Rise Of Oasis’ to get to grips with the brothers’ personalities and complicated sibling relationship.
“I was honoured to be asked and it was an interesting job for me watching footage of the brothers and interviews having not really listened to their music or followed the band.” she says.
PJ Harrison wanted to know why their brothers’ relationship was so volatile despite having the same upbringing.
Lesley summarised that Noel, being six years older than Liam, had borne the brunt of their father’s physical violence, often stepping in to save their mum Peggy from him.
“As a result, as an adult Noel is more introverted,” she says today. “He wrote his feelings down in the songs. For Liam, who is more an extrovert, the fight he didn’t have with his father but wanted, having witnessed the violence but having been too young to help his mother, is the fight he still wants to have now so he acts out.”
For now though it is back to her protagonist Jo McCready as she works on the next standalone story in the series which will be published next year.
● The Corpse Light by Lesley McEvoy (Zaffre, £9.99) is published today