This role has been a challenge as you’re normally given a character and you explore who they are and how the story changes them. With this one, they go into such an extreme situation right at the beginning that they’re always in a nightmarish and extremist situation. So you don’t get to know Matilda as she might be on a day-to-day or casual basis. a b Petit, Chris (8 May 2004). "Review: Tokyo by Mo Hayder". The Guardian . Retrieved 29 July 2021.

Meanwhile, Sian Reese-Williams ( Line Of Duty, Hidden) stars DI Maia Lincoln, a woman with a case to prove, Juliet Stevenson is Mathilda Anchor-Ferrers, an intelligent yet neurotic wealthy housewife, with Owen Teale ( Game Of Thrones) as her wealthy and well-connected husband Oliver. Annes Elwyplays their daughter Lucia Anchor-Ferrers. Born in Essex on 2 January 1962, Hayder grew up in Loughton as the daughter of John Bastin, an astrophysicist, and Susan Hollins, a teacher. [3] [5] She had a younger brother, Richard. [1] She left school and home for London shortly before her 16th birthday. Hayder was educated at The American University and Bath Spa University. [2] Acting and modelling career [ edit ] From the latest Scandinavian serial killer to Golden Age detective stories, we love our crime novels! I've done it!! I've gotten to the latest instalment of the Caffery series and sadly I'm a little disappointed with this one.Gogarty, Conor (24 March 2022). "Big TV crew pitches up in Cardiff street as Line of Duty star films new series". Wales Online . Retrieved 24 May 2023.

Now, you could say there is a decent mystery in who these two really are and why they are targeting this particular family. But it is obscured by a sheer unpleasantness that taps into our deep-seated fears: of home invasion, torture, the threat of rape and murder. Elsewhere, we are witness to other grim crimes. In relation to Lucia, Matilda hasn’t really gone on the journey with her daughter to discover what it is that’s disturbing and upsetting for her, so there’s a sense of irritation and disappointment as well as love. But during the course of the series, in this very extreme situation, I think she discovers how profound her love of this daughter is and that she would indeed die for her to prevent her daughter suffering at all.Owen Teale as wealthy Oliver Anchor-Ferrers. (Image credit: BBC) Sacha Dhawan on playing Honey and Molina Her fellow authors praised her as a writer who pushed the limits of the crime genre with her terrifying thrillers. Iwan and Sasha have fresh, young faces that are both charming and disarming. Therefore you invite them in and, without realising, you’re basically asking the devil in for a cup of tea because they are plausible as policemen, which is how they present themselves initially. By the time you start to ask questions, it's too late. Shortly before her death, she completed a new novel The Book of Sand, a speculative thriller written under the pseudonym Theo Clare, which was published in 2022. [17] Personal life [ edit ]

If you have never read a Mo Hayder book, do so, now! 'Wolf' is terrifying, provoking and utterly brilliant. year old Oliver Anchor-Ferrers has just been through surgery to replace his heart valves, and as he contemplates his wife, Matilda, and his adult daughter, Lucia, he also contemplates his own mortality. They’ve come to their beautiful Victorian home they’ve named The Turrets, high on a hill in the Mendips, so that Oliver can recover from his surgery. Lucia is brooding, as usual. It seems she’s never recovered fully since her ex-boyfriend was brutally murdered 14 years ago, not too far from The Turrets, actually, by a madman named Minnet Kable. When Matilda finds something near the house that calls to mind that long ago crime, she’s understandably terrified, and when two men show up, claiming to be police investigating the death of a nearby woman, all hell breaks loose in the Anchor-Ferrers household, calling up old crimes and new vendettas.

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I was totally absorbed from the start. Bloody, intriguing, twisty and fast-paced.' -- ***** Reader review This book is just wow. It is scary because it is one of those subjects that people think could happen. It is completely realistic in nature and that’s what makes it so frightening. Also the twist was absolutely superb!!!! Fourteen years ago two teenage lovers were brutally murdered in a patch of remote woodland. The prime suspect confessed to the crimes and was imprisoned. When I read the scripts, I found it really hard to put them down – I wanted to get to the next episode but I was so frightened when I was reading them, I had to go upstairs and read them beside my sleeping husband because I was too scared to be sitting alone in the kitchen. I think Megan has done a brilliant job with these scripts, really skillful and it’s incredibly challenging to keep everybody's stories alive through six episodes but she has really kept us on our toes. Being able to play characters in these very extreme states was a big enticement as well. When I first read the script, I read all six episodes in a day – I just couldn’t put them down. As I was reading, I would be thinking “I really want to play that scene” and then I’d read the next one and think the same. When I got to episode five, I read this particular scene and I just instantly thought, “right, I’m in”. I’ve been looking to play a different kind of character and I just loved Molina’s journey. It’s been nice to do the comedy, stupidity and lightness of him.

Mo Hayder is one of those popular authors whose books are always billed as ‘heart-stopping’, ‘pulse-racing’, ‘terrifying’, etc. To be honest, I’ve always thought the blurbs make them look rather graphic, but decided it was time to at least try one. I rather wish I hadn’t. I realise lots of people love Hayder and clearly in the end taste is always subjective. But while I felt there was some skill in the basic writing and pacing of the book, the plot, which started out fairly well, became increasingly inconsistent and unbelievable as the book wore on till, quite frankly, it reached the point of absurdity in the end. And I fear the repeated twists and turns played such havoc with the characterisation that by the end the only believable character in the house was Matilda – the rest had had their personalities so clumsily changed so often throughout the course of the book that they had lost all credibility. Soap star Sian Reese-Williams appears in Wolf as DI Maia Lincoln, who was involved in the original investigation into the ‘Donkey Pitch’ murders. A little girl finds a dog with a note in it's collar saying "help me" and so begins Mo Hayder's most chilligly terrifying novel to date. With sublime pacing and plotting once again from Mo Hayder, there is little to disappoint here. I can safely say that Wolf will keep you reading until the wee small hours. If you’re brave enough…

Early life

He also has a string of big and small screen credits, including Doctor Who: Vengeance on Varos, The Thin Blue Line, Midsomer Murders, Torchwood and more recently, Sky One’s A Discovery Of Witches. She is known for her role in the film Truly, Madly, Deeply, for which she received a BAFTA Award nomination for Best Actress in a Leading Role. We have never worked together before but we just hit it off and it's been great considering when you see them on screen they don't really like each other. Well, Honey doesn’t really like Molina at all. It’s been a real joy to play around and just explore these scenes. We had a bit of freedom to switch things up a little bit so there's been times when it's been unpredictable and instinctive and we both kind of just go along with it. Anybody taking a punt on what the flagship BBC drama for the summer would be would probably be surprised to learn it’s a twisted horror-thriller.