Ruth Mancini
Ruth Mancini is an author and criminal defense lawyer. Her background as a solicitor adds authenticity to her crime and psychological fiction. She has spent two decades representing those accused of crimes, navigating courtrooms and police stations. Her storytelling prowess and legal background combine to create 
thrilling reads that will keep you guessing until the very end, including the Sunday Times bestseller The Woman on the Ledge. Mancini was born in London and now lives in Oxfordshire with her husband and two children.
Mancini's new novel is The Day I Lost You.
My Q&A with the author:
How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?Follow Ruth Mancini on Facebook and Instagram.
The Day I Lost You is, at its core, a story about one very all-important day in the lives of each of the three central characters: Lauren, Hope and Drew. Clearly, someone loses a baby that day, so I think the title reflects that, but the question the reader will want answered is who? And why? What happened? Because it’s clear from the outset that both women are laying claim to the same child and he can’t belong to them both. My working title was ‘The Lost Child’ but I knew this was wrong for the genre. When the book was finished it went to my editor and to the sales and marketing teams at my publisher. We toyed with ‘You Belong to Me’ but this, again, was considered wrong for the genre. The cover needed to say, ‘this is a psychological thriller’ and I think we got it right.
What's in a name?
Unlike the title, my characters’ names usually announce themselves at random. The name needs to feel right and fit with that character’s personality, but otherwise, I don’t attach too much importance to them. The exception to that is my recurring criminal defence lawyer character Sarah Kellerman. My editor wanted a standout surname for her and she gave me a few options. I picked Kellerman because I liked it, but I later realised it’s a name that’s more prevalent in America than in the UK where Sarah lives, so I will probably at some point explain that her dad is American and still lives there, in Boston. I just made that up, so you saw it here first. But that’s really how my characters appear. It just happens and their names just come to me without too much thought. They just are who they are. I actually have a friend who lives in my village who’s mum was German and whose dad is American and still lives in Boston, so that’s probably been at the back of my mind and is why it feels right.
How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your new novel?
Quite surprised, I think! I studied English literature at school and read Thomas Hardy and the Brontes and George Elliot, and Shakespeare but was also reading Joanna Trollope and Jilly Cooper and more light-hearted stuff, so it did take me a while to find my voice. I do remember reading a courtroom drama by Leon Uris, whose writing I really enjoyed, but I would never have guessed that I would become a criminal defence lawyer and write legal thrillers.
Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?
Beginnings and endings tend to come pretty easily. It’s all the stuff in the middle that’s harder and gets chopped and changed way too much. I tend to begin my writing day by ‘polishing’ what I wrote yesterday, which can involve three hours of changing a few paragraphs and then putting them back how they were in the first place, and then it’s lunchtime. I need to discipline myself to just chase the story, get it out and not go back until I’ve finished.
Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?
There’s always loads of me in my characters. Like many writers, I began writing for cathartic reasons and my first book was a bit of an outpouring. Although my stories are now stories as opposed to therapy, my characters are still vehicles for my own emotions. But not the bad ones, obviously!
--Marshal Zeringue
