marion leigh

"It's Minx, Petra Minx."

How Marion Leigh came to write A Holiday to Die For

Posted by Marion Leigh on April 15, 2018 . 0 Comments

Authors are often asked what inspired them to write a particular book. In the case of A Holiday to Die For, Marion Leigh answers without hesitation: the road trips she made to Namibia a few years ago. The first took her from Cape Town, South Africa, to the southern and central areas of Namibia, and back, for a total distance of 4700 kilometres on a mix of tarred, salt and gravel roads. The second was from Kasane, Botswana, to Windhoek, the capital of Namibia, via the Zambezi Region and Etosha National Park.

‘From the moment I experienced the magnificent sights and scenery of Namibia I knew I wanted to integrate them into one of my Petra Minx adventure novels. So after I finished Dead Man’s Legacy, the setting for the third book in the series was never in doubt. The starting point for the plot was something I saw when I visited the new city library in Birmingham, England, in 2015 – a couple of dozen young women waiting outside, most of them pregnant and holding young children by the hand, and accompanied by only two men. To me it looked like some sort of commune. Then, on a plane in South Africa, I saw an incredibly beautiful young man, the kind you can’t take your eyes off, the kind you suspect you might do anything for if you didn’t control your feelings. This anonymous young man turned into the character Florian, who builds his vision for the future by using his looks to ensnare women.

The challenge was to blend this side of the story with Petra’s quest to locate a friend’s daughter while attending a lavish wedding in the company of the mercurial Carlo from The Politician’s Daughter.’