After a career writing literary novels and short fiction as Michelle Berry, the Peterborough-based author is now writing psychological thrillers under the name M. S. Berry. Behind the Door is her second one, following The Tenant, which was published earlier this year.

Berry realizes she may have been something of a thriller writer even before she took on her new moniker and genre focus. “As I look back on all my novels, the most interesting parts to me have to do with something sinister in the background, some unknown character or plot or a mysterious setting that lingers long after you’ve written or read a scene,” she says.

And she’s enjoying the shift. “There is something about the unknown that feels like putting together a puzzle,” she says. “You slowly start to see what is right in front of you. Writing mysteries feels like clicking those puzzle pieces together.”

Behind the Door is set in Riverton, a small English hamlet where 20-something Anna has procured a housesitting and bookstore gig that allows her a much-needed time out from her troubled romantic life in Canada, as well as an opportunity to work on her stalled PhD thesis.

The absent landlord, Ryan Boswell, has made it abundantly clear via a series of emails that the closed bedroom door on the second floor is off-limits, and Berry succeeds in ratcheting up the suspense of what might reside behind the door right up until the final pages.

A cast of idiosyncratic bookstore customers contributes another layer of misdirection and ambiguous commentary to the novel’s progress as Anna tries to understand her role within the town.

The creaky, rundown house and dilapidated bookstore exude their own malevolence throughout the novel. “The characters have personality and are memorable, but the setting does, too,” Berry says.

Berry drew from myriad sources, including the Bluebeard fairy tale, in creating Behind the Door. “Usually my novels start with an idea, an image, a saying, or one sentence and I just follow whatever that is to the end,” she says. “It’s during editing that I put everything together, map things out, and connect the pieces.

“All my life is incorporated into my writing but in subtle ways that sometimes only I see connections to – nothing is autobiographical in the real sense of the word, but everything is part of my life, my mind.”

One part of her life that made it into Behind the Door is the bookstore work. “I did own Hunter Street Books in Peterborough for five years,” Berry says. “I worked full-time in the store for three years and then delivered books during the pandemic. It was lovely, but hard work.”

Berry hopes readers will engage with the sinister and mysterious characters and setting. “I really want my readers to get a little shiver when they read, but also not be able to stop reading,” she says.

“I want them to enjoy the characters (you don’t have to like them, but hopefully you’re interested in them and curious about them) and the setting and find everything believable and mildly familiar.

“Even the odd stuff, with luck, will make you want to keep reading.”