At the time I began planning my latest novel, HERE SHE LIES, about a wife and mother who faces identity theft, I was thinking a lot about the ongoing struggles of women who juggle different and sometimes conflicting roles-basically every woman in modern America, including myself. This led me to contemplate the idea of identity and how hard it can be to know exactly who you are by the time you flop into bed at the end of a long, shape-shifting day. How, I wondered, could I transfer the concept of identity, the sense of self that is crucial to all of us, into a novel and still make the story concrete enough to give the reader a solid handle?

The first answer came quickly: I would write about identity theft. It goes straight to the heart of the question 'What is identity?' if someone can just pluck yours out of the thin air of cyberspace and systematically destroy your life. It's a threat we're all wide open to and most of us fear. Research showed me that, once your identity is snatched, it isn't so easy getting it back. Identity theft would provide a compelling context for a story.

Kate Pepper

The next important component of the novel hit me unexpectedly, while on vacation with my family, sitting on a porch overlooking a beautiful lake: My protagonist, Annie, would have an identical twin-Julie. As Annie confronted the fact that her identity had been stolen, Julie would be there to add some misdirection to Annie's sense of her self as it seems to slip away. Annie trusts Julie more than anyone else in the universe but at the same time she begins to wonder if her trust is a mirage.

Then, while I was working out the story for HERE SHE LIES, a terrible thing happened: a friend of mine was murdered while walking on a country road in the early afternoon. Her murder sent shock waves through the small town where she'd been visiting a friend-and it also sent shock waves through me. She was an old work friend whom I hadn't seen for a while, but even so, it was devastating news. I couldn't stop thinking about her. There was no way she wasn't going to creep into my novel; she was too much on my mind to avoid it.

The story opens with Annie leaving her husband, Bobby, whom she believes has been unfaithful, and fleeing to the Massachusetts town where Julie recently moved. She arrives into a crime scene in front of her sister's home. A woman who looks much like the twins has been murdered. The mysterious death casts a shadow over the story as Annie, Bobby and Julie gradually unravel-and are unraveled by-the truth behind the infidelity, murder, and discovery of identity theft that give shape to the story and the mystery at its heart: One of the twins is guilty of murder, but which one?

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