We know you love to discover new crime authors, and Heidi Field is one to watch out for if you enjoy a good serial killer mystery. On 25 June 2025, her first novel – The Other Boy – comes out via Tule Publishing, and it will take into a family torn apart when the police knock on their door.
The detective fears their son Jamie has been taken by a serial killer who’s been burying the bodies in nearby Peasdale Forest, by an old hunting shack. What they find out next shocks them even further… but you’ll have to read the novel to find out.
Heidi Field is a British author who wrote as a hobby for years before studying for a master’s degree, after which she took her thriller stories to another level. She’s a mother of five who has always worked around raising her children, but crime fiction writing was calling her and now they’re older Heidi’s first novel has taken shape. Like the Bagby family in her story, she has a Great Dane dog and lives near some woods. The rest, well, that’s crime fiction.
We wanted to know more, so we invited Heidi to join us on the site to talk about The Other Boy, her ideas, inspiration and serial killers.
What are crime fiction lovers going to love about The Other Boy?
I hope they will love the emotional journeys of all the characters, the grey areas between victim and monster, the twists that they won’t see coming, and the terrible choices that are made out of love and fear.
Tell us about Blair and Scott Bagby, who are your main characters and how have you developed them?
Blair and Scott are a professional couple at the top of their game in their chosen fields, fashion photography and journalism, respectively. They have a teenage son who they think is doing fine. They are a strong, independent, self-reliant pair, who met young and work hard. When their life implodes, Blair is pushed to the edge of her sanity and Scott has no idea how to bring her back. Together, they must search for the truth about their boy, fight for justice and reevaluate everything in order to find a new way to live.
Parents investigating their child’s death is actually pretty uncommon in the genre. Where did the idea come from?
The idea came after watching a documentary about Dean Corll, the Candyman serial killer, who mutilated and murdered over 23 teenage boys. He had two accomplices. I have raised five children; four I have seen through the teenage years, with one to go. As a parent you often think about what could go wrong, accidents, bad choices, dangers along the way, drugs, drink, driving. Not once did I imagine any of the children becoming an accomplice to a serial killer or committing a serious crime. So, that was my story, right there. That was the what if question. What if I found out that my son was the accomplice to a serial killer? The Other Boy is not as straightforward as my what if, there are unexpected twists and turns and the outcome is not what you think it will be, but that was the spark that set of the journey for Scott and Blair.
Who or what are they really up against?
The antagonist is the truth. All the conflict revolves around the truth. Only two people know what happened to Blair and Scott’s son, Jamie, and the truth is not black or white, either. Both parents hold onto a different truth about their son, other characters have different truths again. There are many sides to every story, and it is this idea that provides the conflict.
A burial ground in Peasedale Forest sounds pretty creepy. Tell us more about the atmosphere you’ve tried to create.
A serial killer needs somewhere remote to kill and dispose of his victims, and one of the best ways of hiding a corpse is to bury it somewhere no one will look. I love running, and have the luxury of lots of wonderful countryside on my doorstep, and I can’t help but imagine there being bodies rotting away in the depths of the forest, forgotten, never to be found. Forests are so full of life, and yet quiet, empty and eerie at the same time.
Where did the idea for your killer and their MO come from?
After watching the Dean Corll documentary, I watched one about John Gacy, then Jeffrey Dahmer. I cannot fathom how a man can derive pleasure from these horrific crimes, or how someone else can be drawn in to facilitate such atrocities, so I set about researching the home lives and psychology of serial killers and their accomplices. It is a fascinating rabbit hole, and my story could have gone in so many different directions.
The book looks at grief and family relationships. Can tell us how you explored those themes and any others that you consider in the story?
Honestly, the characters wrote themselves. I put them in the scenes and let my imagination do the rest. I did watch interviews with relatives of victims of serials killers, and the range of responses was vast. Some are angry, others want to move on, there are those that were unable to talk about their loved one decades later. I read about stages of grief, and I read personal accounts of people who had lost children. In the end, my characters had the freedom to react to the story however they chose, and I let them. Anything goes with grief, there is no right or wrong way to behave, it is too deep and desperate and too complex to fit any sort of pattern, every passage through loss is individual.
What are some of the crime books/thrillers and authors that have inspired you, and why?
I do have some stand out favourites. We Need To Talk About Kevin blew me away. The Silent Patient still makes me question how the writer started at the end and finished at the beginning. Clare MacKintosh, never disappoints with a jaw-dropping twist.
The Problem With Forever by Jennifer L Armentrout – for me this was how I wanted to write characters, honest, vulnerable, flawed.
What’s next for Heidi Field?
The Other Boy is the first in a series of three books. The second book, The Other Mother, is with my editor at Tule Publishing, and I am currently writing book three, The Other Killer. I am loving the life of a writer, loving learning and improving with each new novel. I can spend hours in my office writing and leave feeling like I have only been in there for 10 minutes, and I know I am blessed to have found a publisher who wants to champion my stories. I hope people enjoy reading them as much as I have enjoyed writing them.
The Other Boy by Heidi Field is published on 25 June 2025. Order your copy using the buttons below.
