Based in Maine, Kate Kaminski is an indie filmmaker and also an indie author of crime fiction. With her novel I Am Danvers released in May 2026, she reimagines Mrs Danvers – the creepy housekeeper who was the antagonist in Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca. The setting is contemporary and Marie ‘Danny’ Danvers is an impressionable young woman who moves to California to housekeep at a very different sort of Manderley, where she meets characters from the worlds of art and entertainment, and gets sucked into some pretty questionable activities…

You’ll have to read the novel to find out more about all of that but riffing on the ambiguity surrounding Du Maurier’s sexuality, as well as interpretations of the original Mrs Danvers’s motivations, Kate’s version of her is queer and this is a very real and evident part of her character. But this book’s appeal will go beyond an LGBTQ+ readership. On top of its literary allusions to Rebecca, the archetypal gothic novel, Kate has woven in a pulp-noir sensibility along with humour to parallel some of the madcap schemes that Danny gets involved in.

Kate has lived in many parts of the United States, including Pennsylvania, Washington, DC and Austin, Texas and has been writing short stories, screenplays and novels most of her life. You’ll find her crime fiction in Shotgun Honey, for example. She sees the world with a director’s eye and picks up potential story ideas everywhere.

We decided to find out more about I Am Danvers, and this is what she told us about her fascinating book…

What are crime fiction lovers going to love about I Am Danvers?

Readers tell me that they can’t help rooting for Danny even when she does terrible things. The art world crossover with Hollywood is a perfect collision of corruption, greed and pretension, so if you’re into stories about grifters and people behaving badly, you’ll love this book.

Who is Marie ‘Danny’ Danvers? What inspired and how have you developed the character?

Danny is a survivor, but her Achilles heel is the childhood trauma that creates an unquenchable need for security. I wanted to give my Mrs Danvers a juicy back story, and reimagine who that housekeeper would be in the present. Danny is a striver and a quick study, but she also has bad taste in women and a talent for self-deception that get her into trouble. Con artists and liars are fun characters to create. It’s such rich psychological territory.

What is she up against in I Am Danvers?

All Danny wants is to forget her troubled past and find a better life but that goal keeps getting thwarted by other people’s self-interest. With everyone working against her, she has to do whatever’s necessary to survive. Be forewarned: there are no good guys in this story.

Who are some of the interesting characters we’ll meet?

Mrs Krawczyk is a batty but kind old lady with a very memorable pet. Paul Westerfield is a Hollywood hustler and a sadist who takes an unhealthy shine to Danny. Bebe Patten is a line-crossing, nepo baby with a ruthless ambition to be known for anything other than being her famous parents’ only child. Ian St Martin is the prettiest one in the room, a charming snake who lures Danny into his criminal schemes.

How important is Danny’s sexuality in the story and can you tell us more about how that links to one of your key inspirations, Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca?

In Du Maurier’s novel, Mrs Danvers could be read as being romantically obsessed with a dead woman. That fixation certainly drives her every action in the story. I wanted to make Mrs Danvers’s sexuality just part of who she is, so I’ve set the story in the present. You meet Danny just before she becomes housekeeper at Manderley and then you’re taken back to ten years earlier to see how she develops that fateful obsession.

It’s got humour, a pulp sensibility as well as strands of the gothic novel, but what was the overall tone and atmosphere you wanted to achieve in I Am Danvers?

I grew up loving melodrama and pulp, so I focused on creating a lot of contrast between the hardscrabble, rather desperate world that Danny inhabits and the insular world of wealth she is introduced to. Once she arrives in California, she is thrust into a literal fantasy world but soon realises that under the surface is decay and corruption.

What influence has your background in the film industry had on the story?

Being a filmmaker who writes and edits has taught me a lot about pacing and shot composition and how that applies to visual writing. How close up or far away you are influences how you perceive the characters and their place in the story. How shots are joined together controls pace and makes meaning. I approach writing the same way. As for the film industry, it’s a love-hate thing. But because Hollywood tends to breed a craving for success at any cost, it’s fertile ground for me.

What crime books and/or authors have inspired you most, and why? What are you reading at the moment?

I Am Danvers wouldn’t exist without the genius of Daphne Du Maurier, so that’s an obvious inspiration. I read a lot of crime fiction and have favorites: Patricia Highsmith, Margaret Millar, Marijane Meaker. All very tight writers with psychologically complex protagonists. Keigo Higashino and Natsuo Kirino are my favorite writers in translation for the same reasons. I just finished The Night of Baba Yaga by Akira Otani, and all I can say is please give me more. I’m currently reading Do Evil in Return by Margaret Millar. The writing is so good.

What’s next for Danvers, and what’s next for Kate Kaminski?

I hope the book will reach more readers who are ready for an anti-heroine like Danny, and I hope Rebecca fans will appreciate my reinterpretation of Mrs Danvers. I’m currently working out a murder mystery set in Maine titled Fame Kills. Let’s see how that goes.

I Am Danvers is out now and you can grab a copy using our Amazon buttons below.