Creative Writing Lecturer DD Johnston publishes new novel
2nd July 2015
Today saw the launch of The Secret Baby Room, a new novel by UoG lecturer D.D. Johnston. Johnston has recently been described by The Morning Star as one of the country’s most versatile novelists, and certainly this book is far removed from his previous two. The Secret Baby Room is a mystery suspense thriller:
In the taut, suspenseful opening pages, Claire, just moving into her new house, looks up to see “the strangest thing. High up in the abandoned tower block that overshadowed their estate, a woman was bottle-feeding a baby.” The woman disappears, but the mystery haunts and deeply disturbs Claire. The tower is condemned, fenced off and surrounded with yellow-black warning signs, its entrances boarded “and clearly marked: DANGER”. Obsessed with breaking through into this forbidden zone, Claire fears that she is actually going mad, as she sits “staring at the concrete, as though the Secret Baby Room might somehow reappear…She suddenly saw how crazy it all was.
As her own life falls apart, Claire risks everything in her quest. It’s an investigation that leads her not only towards the dark knowledge of past crimes but towards an understanding of the damaged lives of those around her. Johnston offers us a wonderfully gripping read, but also a compassionate and moving story of people struggling to survive at the margins of a rapidly changing city. (CrimeCulture)
This morning he discussed the novel – which he started ten years ago – with Mike Sweeney on BBC Manchester, and you can listen to the interview here. And you can read the story of his life before lecturing, and how he came to write the book, in this article in Northern Soul.