Shari Lapena on missing babies and psychological suspense

Shari Lapena's internationally bestselling novel The Couple Next Door opens with a couple having dinner with their neighbours. Their baby goes missing, and the parents become suspects. Below, Shari Lapena explains where she came up with the idea for the book, and why she thinks the genre name "grip-lit" is a bit of a misnomer.

The idea of a child being taken from its bed just popped into my mind one day. I'm a parent, and that's a core fear for a lot of people. I wanted something really gripping. I was thinking about a couple who were invited to a dinner party next door — what would happen if the babysitter stood them up at the last minute? Most people probably wouldn't leave their baby alone in the house. So I had to make it more of a grey area, so people reading the book could understand the decision that they'd made, even if they didn't agree with it.

These days, they're calling the genre grip-lit — the domestic noir. My book falls into that genre, I suppose, but on the one hand it's sort of a misnomer because women have been writing psychological thrillers for decades. I think what's newer, or where the focus is going right now, is the purely domestic setting where you're looking at the intimate tension and all the psychological suspense.

Shari Lapena's comments have been edited and condensed.