An intimate look inside the mind of a charming con man and the women he preys upon | Audible.com
An intimate look inside the mind of a charming con man and the women he preys upon
Bestselling author Lisa Jewell talks about her new multicast psychological thriller, “Don’t Let Him In,” why she writes her villains in the first person, and the genre she’d love to try writing someday.
Note: Text has been lightly edited for clarity and does not match audio exactly.
Nicole Ransome: Hi, I'm Audible Editor Nicole and I'm jumping out of my seat in excitement to welcome bestselling author Lisa Jewell. Hailing from London, Lisa Jewell has made a name for herself all over the world with her list-topping tales like , , , and more. She's here today to discuss her newest mind-bender, . Welcome, Lisa.
Lisa Jewell: Hello. It's lovely to be here.
NR: It's great to have you. So, Don't Let Him In is a propulsive thriller following three women—Martha, Nina, and Ash—and their ongoing encounters with a con man involving, or trying to involve, himself in their lives. Can you tell us what the inspiration was behind the story?
LJ: I think anyone who reads this book will probably guess what the inspiration was, or certainly anybody who, like myself, has spent a large amount of the last few years watching Netflix documentaries like Dirty John and The Tinder Swindler, listening to podcasts, and in my case as well also reading memoirs written by women who've been in marriages and relationships with men like my Nick Radcliffe in the book. I've been completely gobbling up this kind of content. I've been absolutely loving it.
But I just kept feeling this lack of any insight into the workings of these men's minds. Why do they behave like this? And these are often long-term operators who've been behaving like this for their entire adult lives, going from woman to woman, lying, manipulating, spinning these ridiculous webs of lies. I couldn't work out why. It just seems so difficult and complicated, it's just like, “Well, wouldn't it be easier just to get a job?” [laughs]
I thought, “I really, really want to spend some time getting into the head of a man like this,” inspired by all these men that I've read about and listened to and watched. So, that was absolutely the inspiration for the book, was wanting to try and get some insight into a man like that.
NR: I found it interesting that the story pivots between first-person POV for Nick and the third-person POV for the women who interact with him. Why did you decide to make Nick the closer perspective over the women?
LJ: Anyone who's read a lot of my books will know that I do this a lot. I will always go first person on the most complicated character in the book, the most questionable character in the book, the most confusing or challenging character in the book. I want to get straight in there, and almost when I'm writing them in the first person, it's because they're talking to me. I have various other characters in the book who have a very specific role within the book. I always have a character who's like the detective, the one who's put in the book in order to solve the mystery and ask the questions. And then quite often I'll have a character who is a victim. But then I very, very often have a point of view in my book which is of the villain. I don't like to use the word villain because I try and be a little bit more nuanced than that. But the more challenging, darker characters, I pretty much always write them in the first person.
NR: Yeah, I actually really enjoyed seeing his perspective and being inside of his mind. It kind of also frustrates you as a listener. You're hearing how he's pulling one over on somebody, and then you want them to see it, too. But they're not going to see it, and you know they're not going to see it, especially for the sake of the story.
LJ: Because Nick Radcliffe, he's just really, really good at women. He gets women, he knows what women want, he knows what to say to women, he knows how to treat women. He's benefiting, basically, off the back of the fact that so many men are just so rubbish at relationships with women. And he's kind of striding into these relationships just saying, "It's not difficult, all you have to do is show up. All you have to do is be attentive. All you have to do is be supportive and kind and caring." And he does all of those things.
"I will always go first person on the most complicated character in the book, the most questionable character in the book, the most confusing or challenging character in the book."
So, we get why these women are so beguiled by him. But as you say, because he's written in the first person, you also know that while he's telling a certain woman that he loves her and he adores her, he's also thinking, "I don't like the way you smell." And so it's just a horrible thing for the reader in a way to get why the woman is so besotted. You also think, "But he doesn't like the way your hair smells" [laughs]. It's just that horrible, horrible sort of imbalance between the two things.
NR: Yeah, it really drove home the point of this man is a true con man, a true manipulator. Because the main villain does suffer from some clear mental health issues that are spurring manipulative behaviors and actions we hear in this story, did you have to do a lot of research in order to fully dive into his perspective? Especially as his parts are told from the first person?
LJ: I really didn't. I think I came to this ready to go. I had built up so much prior knowledge from all this immersion in the genre, which is so zeitgeisty. We've all been absorbing this for the last few years, ever since Tinder Swindler came out. I just had it all there.
What was much more challenging for me, or what I thought was going to be more challenging for me, is it's all well and good listening to women in a podcast talking about what a man did to them, or reading a memoir that a woman has written about her husband's behavior and how he treated her from her point of view. But what was going to be more challenging for me was to find a way for him to explain his terrible behavior, because I'm actually a really bad liar in real life. At least, I thought I was a bad liar.
What I actually realize now is I just don't like lying. But I managed to get my brain to do some things I didn't think my brain was capable of doing in order for Nick to explain his absences, his lies, his bizarre behaviors to the women who loved him. I think I did a really good job of it, because he had to do a really good job of it. There's no way that this character who's been scamming women for 30 years of his adult life would've been able to do that for so many years if he wasn't incredibly good at lying. So that was a challenge, but I think I pulled it off, definitely.
NR: Oh, you did. I think you really got into the mind of Nick. He is quite a character.
LJ: I couldn't believe every time I got to a point in the book where I thought, "Okay, he's now going to have to explain to his wife what he's been doing for the last three days with his phone switched off. Or he's going to have to explain to his wife why he's lost his wedding ring. Or he’s got to explain to his wife why he's just come home with a brand-new Tesla." And every time I managed to find a way for him to just weasel his way out of it.
NR: Oh, my gosh, it made me want to scream sometimes, when they would fall for it. I was like, "Wait a minute, don't lose the plot.”
LJ: Yeah, but you had the advantage over the women in the book because you knew what was going on in his head.
NR: I read the blurb first before I opened the page [laughs]. So, all three women protagonists, Nina, Ash, and Martha, are all vulnerable in different ways. Nina is a recently widowed woman, still grief-stricken. Ash is Nina's daughter, who is still reeling from her dad's recent passing. Martha is a married working mother. Why did you want to create women with these specific backgrounds for Nick to take advantage of?
LJ: That's a really good question. Obviously, I came to this book knowing that I was going to have my Nick. I knew that I was going to have this guy, but I wasn't quite sure which other perspectives [would] help shape the story. Originally, I thought I would have Nina, who is his newest conquest. Nina is a woman that at the beginning of the book, he's just arrived in her life, out of the blue. I thought I would have her be the one with suspicions. But then I thought, “Actually, I like to mix up my generations and my genders in a book.” I think it makes it easier to follow a book when you've got multiple characters if they come from different genders and generations. So, I thought, "How about if it's her daughter who's the one with suspicions?"
Ash is Nina's 26-year-old daughter. And, of course, it's awkward for her because her mother's been grieving for a year, and this man has come into her life and he's fundamentally perfect. She can't actually find anything to criticize about him, but she just knows with every atom in her being that there's something wrong about this guy. But how can she say that to her mom, because it's like she's trying to destroy her happiness? It's like she's trying to take something away from her. So, she's struggling on her own trying to get to the bottom of who this Nick character is.
But then I thought it was equally important if I'm showing a character who is very suspicious of Nick and is digging around trying to work out what's going on with him, to show someone who's in love with him as well. I think what's very interesting about the dynamic between Nick and Martha is we know as readers that this is not his first rodeo. He's married many times, had many different relationships with different women. But as far as he's concerned, this is the first time he's been in love. He's been trying to be normal with Martha. I thought that would be a really interesting point of view as well, of someone who's actually madly in love with him and is only just starting to get the sense that things aren't what they should be and that his behavior isn't quite what it should be. So, yes, I thought those were two very contrasting and interesting, informative points of view.
NR: Yeah. I enjoyed Ash's questions. I like the fact that she was the one that was really pushing back.
LJ: Yes. Rooting around inside his jacket pocket.
NR: It was one specific moment where she's with her friend and they're trying to figure out and they have the questions, but they already have the explanations, like, “I know, that sounded fishy, too, to me." But then they finally found that the information is like, “Okay, this is what we got.”
LJ: He’s not wriggling out of this one. Exactly. Actually, so much of the tone of the book, I've now realized because I do come to this man deliberately at the age of 55. I wanted to come to him when he was in the long game, and he'd been doing this for a long, long time. Obviously, I wanted his game to unravel. And it unravels purely because he is in love, and he starts making mistakes and he starts acting with emotions that he's not used to acting on, like vindictiveness, jealousy. So, he starts introducing these emotions into his playbook and he's not done that before. He's usually ice-cold. The minute he's in love and he starts introducing these other alien emotions into his playbook, that's when everything starts falling apart. And then, of course, you've got Ash digging away in the background as well.
NR: Just unfortunate circumstances for him.
LJ: Yes, indeed.
NR: Mostly for everyone else. This story features some of Nick's other women, like Tara and Amanda, really showing how vastly different all of the ladies are and how far he's stretching his mental capacities to be all of these ladies' perfect man. With the varied backgrounds of these women, it seemed to me that you almost made the point here that nobody is invulnerable to manipulation. Was that what you were going for?
LJ: I think in a way, yes. I met a lady at a book signing in January who'd read an early copy of the book and she came to the top of the signing line and said, "I just finished your new book last night, and I threw it across the room." And she threw it across the room because she was so furious with all the women in the book. She was so furious with them all for all believing him and allowing him to manipulate them the way that he did. But I actually think that's really kind of unfair, because it doesn't just happen to stupid women or idiots or tragic victims. This happens to your best friend, this happens to your mother, this happens to normal women, because these men are clever. They are really, really clever, and they know which buttons to press.
"I should have started off writing psychological thrillers from the beginning because it's clearly my sweet spot, my happy place."
So, I kind of did want to make that point through the book that this could happen to anybody. Nick Radcliffe might not be the guy to do it. Different guys have different MOs and different ways of presenting themselves to women. But it is very much a point that I was trying to make because I think all the women that he manipulates and scams in the book are all really straight-up strong, honest, hard-working, clever women. They all have that in common.
NR: I, for one, really enjoy Tara. I personally think that I saw myself a little more in her. I don't know if that's the best thing [laughs]. Without giving any spoilers, what was a lie that Nick pulled over on one of the ladies that you found the most enraging or enjoyable to write?
LJ: Oh, gosh. Oh, my goodness. My mind is just rattling through all these lies. I'm thinking about the wedding ring, I'm thinking about him getting a haircut, I'm thinking about him using his mother. I suppose that was really quite upsetting, that he told a couple of women in his big web that he had to leave home for a while because his mother had dementia and he needed to go and take care of her. Well, actually, he was doing no such thing. I genuinely was quite blown away by the quality of all the lies that he came out with. But I think that one was the most upsetting.
NR: And it worked. That's the crazy part. But I love that about it. It's that you want to not believe it, but you think about it, it's like, “Okay, it kind of makes sense.” And if you really like the person, you don't go too far into the question, so you don't actually really get that answer.
LJ: I mean, think about your very own partner who you love, whether you have one or not, whether the readers have. And if they said to you, "My mother is suffering from dementia, and she started wandering and I need to go and spend some time with her and check that she's safe, and get things set up for her," you wouldn't immediately disbelieve them, obviously, if the mother was not a part of your life. It's human nature to believe what somebody tells you, particularly when it's somebody that you love and care about. So it's not that easy just to catch people out in lies like that.
NR: That's why I say it's a very relatable, very frustrating, but very relatable story. Don't Let Him In is a multicast listen, featuring some huge names like , , , and more. What drove you to making this story such a star-studded performance?
LJ: Oh, my goodness. Well, it's not me. It's my amazing audio team at Penguin Random House in London. They have this incredible in-house studio, and they come in really strong on every production with a very, very high-end wish list of people that they would like to be performers. I think this has been particularly the case since COVID and lockdown and lots of actors being at home, so they had a much higher quality of selection of actors who might be willing to do audiobooks. I think it's proved to be so popular with readers, having recognizable voice actors, having film stars and high-profile people reading their favorite authors’ audiobooks, I don't think there's any going back from that now. I just think that's now a thing. I'm very grateful and lucky that I do get such incredibly high-profile actors on my audio editions. This one is brilliant, and Richard Armitage, not only is his voice perfection but he looks like Nick Radcliffe, too. I mean, he genuinely looks like him. So the whole package is just perfect.
NR: I was actually wondering if Richard Armitage's looks, since they're so similar to Nick's, influenced the decision to choose him.
LJ: No, I genuinely don't think that's why. I think that was just something that we all realized afterwards, particularly because Richard Armitage is just starting to go gray and my Nick Radcliffe character is a self-professed silver fox. He's got a white beard and white hair and dazzling blue eyes. He's super, super good-looking. I think that's something we haven't quite mentioned, actually, we've been talking about how charming he is and how clever he is. But he is actually super good looking as well. And he keeps himself in really good condition. He is very tall, he is very rangy, he's very well-dressed. And so now Richard Armitage is starting to get a bit silvery, he looks even more like Nick Radcliffe.
NR: Love that. Were there any moments in particular that you were most excited to hear being performed by these narrators?
LJ: Oh, goodness, yes. I used to never listen to my audiobooks because I thought it would give me the cringe. And I've found that I don't get cringed out listening to my books at all. I actually love listening to my books. And now I actively look forward to loading it up and listening. I think I was just looking forward to Richard doing Nick, and just seeing how he would layer up that velvety, charming, beguiling voice, but all those little chips of ice in it as well. I think I was just really looking forward to listening to the Nick chapters by Richard.
NR: Yeah, I definitely think Richard Armitage, he did very well in portraying all the sides of Nick. He definitely got the charming and the sultry, but then at the same time, like, “Oh no, there's something else lurking.”
LJ: There is a moment towards the end of the book where Nick finally loses his rag, and he gets really angry and he does a bit of a monologue, a really shouty monologue. And we've never really heard him shout before. He did that brilliantly, finally after chapters and chapters of him keeping his cool, he just lost it. That was chilling. Brilliant.
NR: I was waiting for that moment. I was like, “He's going to get spread thin.” I feel like every con man, they always have that moment where it's just done. They can't keep it up anymore, and then they just start to spiral.
LJ: Exactly. Absolutely.
NR: So, over the past few years, you've written many bestselling thrillers. However, your roots began in the romantic comedy genre with in 1999. What drew you to the thriller genre?
LJ: Well, interestingly, I've always felt like when I sat down to write my first novel in 1997 that it was meant to be a thriller. But then I wondered if I'd spun myself a false narrative, like it was a false memory. I had to dig out some old press cuttings for Ralph's Party, because it celebrated its 25th birthday last year. And when I was going through the old press cuttings, I found the synopsis that I'd sent out to agents with my first three chapters. I hadn't written the rest of the book at that point, I'd only written three chapters, so I didn't know what the rest of the book was going to be. It's very naughty behavior, by the way, you're not supposed to do that. And I read this synopsis, it's the first time I'd read it in years, and realized I had written a synopsis for a thriller. It was supposed to be a dark, twisty, psychological thriller, and somehow along the way I had been led towards the light and the sunshine.
"I'd be lost without audio. I find it so enriching and so enjoyable, and it actually fits into my life so much better than reading and print used to. It's a bigger part of my life now than reading in print ever was."
I think that was to do with my state of mind at the time. I'd just come out of a very dark relationship and I was back in London, and it was the '90s and it was summer, and I was just living my best life. I think the book reflected who I was and the moment I was experiencing at that time in my 20s.That was really successful. So, of course, that led the way for the early stage in my career. I couldn't just suddenly stop writing romantic comedies and start writing the dark stuff that I really wanted to write.
So, I just very gradually took baby steps away from romantic relationships, away from comedy, into darker themes, family themes, sagas, mysteries, dramas. And then eventually, about 10 books ago, I went for it, I killed someone. That was kind of the no-turning-back moment for me, really. It just turns out that I should have started off writing psychological thrillers from the beginning because it's clearly my sweet spot, my happy place.
NR: Well, listen, I can't say that you shouldn't do anything else because I would like to know, are there any other genres that you'd like to explore in the future?
LJ: Oh, good question. I always say no to this, but then someone suggested a genre that I hadn't even thought of when I was doing a Q&A a while back. And I thought, "Oh, I never actually thought of that as being a genre." But actually it is a genre and it is something I haven't done, and it's something I would like to do, and that's horror. I would like to write a full-blown horror one day, like a gothic horror, monsters, and not like monsters with teeth and fangs, but sort of psychological monsters. So, yeah, one day I would like to do that, but for now I'm going to stick here in my little safety zone for now. I left my safety zone last year and wrote a novel for Marvel, which was quite the leap out of my comfort zone, I have to say. That was very challenging to write, and made me very keen to go back to just writing some more psychological thrillers, keeping it simple. But one day I'll do a horror.
NR: As a horror enthusiast, I would very much enjoy that. I would love a first-person POV story from the monster's perspective, absolutely.
LJ: I would have to, wouldn't I? I'd absolutely have to. It's the only way I could do it.
NR: Literally, I would eat it up. Well, I know you just said that you're stepping back into your comfort zone. Does that mean you're working on anything new at the moment?
LJ: I have completed the first draft of my next novel already, which comes out in summer of 2026. It doesn't have a title yet. It is very different to Don't Let Him In, but it is a multicast thing again. I'm looking forward to seeing who gets cast in my character roles this time next year. Even more excitingly than that, I have signed up to do an Audible Original, which is very, very cool indeed. It's going to be a 40,000-word novella, which is about half the length of my traditional books. It's a Christmas setting, and it will be recorded I guess next year, and it will be available to Audible listeners from September 2026 and then it'll be available in print at some point in 2027. I've started writing that one as well, so it's all happening.
NR: Very exciting. So, are you a listener yourself? If so, do you have any favorite audiobooks you would recommend to listeners?
LJ: You can't see the piles of books that surround me in this room. I used to be the most voracious print reader. I would read and read and read. And then I lost the ability to read, it was a bit of a COVID thing that happened. I don't know, my focus went, just completely went. I never got back into reading in print. I got quite depressed because it meant that I really wasn't reading at all.
And I tell you what got me into audio, was listening to my own book.They gave me the file of None of This Is True to listen to and I thought, "I'll give it a listen,” even though I thought it was going to make me cringe. And then it didn't. I just loved it. So that was early 2023, from that point on, I've just become audio all the way. I am Mrs. Audio. I'm constantly listening to something everywhere I go, and it's made housework fun, which is another lovely bonus. I'm currently listening to , which is so far an excellent, excellent audio performance by the voice actor on that, and a very, very interesting book.
NR: That is great to hear. I also started listening to books that I've already read before in print. That was like my onboarding process.
LJ: It's remarkably the same, but remarkably different. It's a very, very strange thing, and I can't quite get my head around it, what the difference is. But I feel certainly me, current me, me who can't focus on a print book, I'd be lost without audio. I find it so enriching and so enjoyable, and it actually fits into my life so much better than reading and print used to. It's a bigger part of my life now than reading in print ever was. So, hooray for audio. Saved me.
NR: Yeah. I'm glad Audible was able to serve you some lemonade when COVID gave you lemons. Oh, my goodness.
LJ: Absolutely.
NR: Well, thanks a bunch, Lisa, for taking the time to chat with me today. Listeners, you can get Don't Let Him In on Audible now. Thank you, Lisa.
