When you search on Google for the name of Bella Mackie (London, 1983), the first thing that catches your attention is that the search engine presents her as the wife of Greg James, the BBC’s morning voice. This is also how it appears on Wikipedia and, what is even more scandalous, in the author’s biographical profile in some bookstores. online.
The reality is that Mackie is a best-selling writer in the United Kingdom, where he sold 500,000 copies of his fiction debut, How to kill your family (Addition). He hopes to suffer the same fate in the Spanish market, although the book is “stereotypically British.” “It talks about the British class system, about London elitism, about English humor in dealing with unpleasant situations, so I don’t expect people outside to find it as funny as people here. Although it’s also true that “There is nothing that a European likes more than to laugh at how ridiculous we British are.”, he admits between laughs. “I would be the first to do it myself.”
She herself uses humor as a tool to deal with life’s setbacks. “When my ex left me when I was 29, my parents told me: ‘Today it hurts, but tomorrow you will have a good story to tell.’ So I try to see everything from the positive side. It is a questionable mechanism, but when you have a lot of anxiety , help,” he says.
Optimism, on the other hand, does not suit Grace Bernard, the protagonist of her novel: a cold and angry woman with the world, especially with her biological father, who has rejected and ignored her all her life. Ella Grace is not satisfied with being the bastard daughter of the patriarch of the Artemis, an unscrupulous tycoon, so she decides that the only way to do justice and take her rightful place is to liquidate all the members of his adoptive family one by one.
This truculent story, explains Mackie, is born from the passion for true crimes that she has cultivated since she was a child. “My father read me stories about murderers from the 60s, 70s and 80s before going to sleep. I know it sounds strange and I seem to be crazy, but I was fascinated by them. When I grew up, I devoured all the Agatha-style mystery and crime books Christie that passed through my hands.