Rhiannon Lassiter

Ghost of a Chance

Last Chance...

‘You know that girl, the one in my class? The one that died. She lived here.’

Lost Chance...

‘You’re dead, Eva Chance. You died and nobody noticed. You died and nobody cared.’

No more Chances left...

They said it was suicide, but Eva knows she was murdered. Now she inhabits a skewed ghost world along with the tortured and malevolent spirits of her family home. Solving the crime could end her existence — but if the killer isn’t found how many more will die?

Awards

Shortlisted for the Southern Schools Book Award 2012 (shortlist of 5)

Photos from OUP's Dark Fiction event

The launch party for Rhiannon Lassiter's Ghost of a Chance, Wiliam Hussey's Witchfinder: Gallows at Twilight and Joss Stirling's Finding Sky.

Rhiannon talks about writing Ghost of a Chance

First published on Mary Hoffman's book maven blog, 2011-01-10

For many years I've wanted to write a book set in a stately home but didn't have the right idea for it. Country houses are full of history but I prefer to write in modern (or futuristic) time periods. Towards the end of working on Bad Blood I started sketching out the very bare bones of a stately home story but in those first few chapters Eva was an ordinary girl with siblings, parents and friends.

I was thinking towards some sort of mystery or murder and somewhere during the first 10,00 words I had a sudden insight "what if she's the victim in this murder story?" Then I had to go back and rewrite (the first of many rewrites!) and reshape Eva's character and background. With one fell swoop siblings, parents and friends vanished – and so did Eva, becoming an invisible and ghostly denizen of her family home.

Ever since that crucial insight I thought of the book as half ghost story, half crime novel. After the more mystical mysterious magical happenings of Waking Dream and Bad Blood, I wanted to write a book where the supernatural elements ran in tandem with a physical action plot.

So in Ghost of a Chance, Eva and the ghost world exist on the other side of the looking glass to the Strattons and the murder investigation. The challenge for me was to have those two strands twining around each other while retaining certain points of mystery up until the very end.

I learnt a lot writing this book and it was tough work living up to the challenge I set myself. I think a lot of things about plot and action crystallized for me during the writing of this novel and I hope that readers will get the benefit of that. I'm excited to see what people think of the new book.

Download "April Fool" chapter one of Ghost of a Chance as a PDF.

Press release PDF
The Ghost of a Chance official press release from OUP

Ghost of a Chance was Crime Central's book of the week in January 2011

Rhiannon "twitterviewed" by Emlyn Chand about Ghost of a Chance