Nicci Cloke, Her Many Faces - Author Interview

Thanks to Nicci Cloke and Tess at HarperCollins for the ARC copy and their time in communicating with me and answering my questions. It is my favourite read of 2025 and I look forward to reading more from Cloke! See the original post of the Interview here - The Strand Magazine website.

Buy the book directly from HarperCollins HERE.

Read the Book Review Now

1. What’s your stance on conspiracy theories? Many of us have fallen down a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories at some point. Do you have any guilty pleasure theories? Personally, I’m a firm believer that aliens exist—but I’m not sure they’re trying to find us anytime soon.

   
   

I’ve fallen down so many rabbit holes in the past few years, both during the research of this novel and before. I recently read a brilliant book, Conspiracy: A History of Boll*cks Theories, and How Not to Fall for Them by Tom Phillips and Jonn Elledge, which was so fascinating on the origins of some of the most prominent and enduring conspiracy theories. It also introduced me to some excellent ones I wasn’t aware of previously, including the ‘Paul is Dead’ urban legend about the Beatles replacing McCartney with a lookalike in 1966. While that one didn’t convince me, I’m open to the prospect of there being other life out there in the universe – I’d love to know what they’d think of us if there was.

2. Why did you decide to make the point of view all from men and no women? I found this choice fascinating—could it be a commentary on the male gaze, or perhaps the patriarchal structures that constantly judge women?

   
   

Yes, I’m really interested in the concept of the male gaze, and, as you say, the societal structures that have made it so much easier for us to judge women, or to try and pigeonhole women in a way we don’t seem to do with men. Currently in the UK, the tv show Adolescence (which is exceptionally well done) is all over the news, and there have been some powerful conversations coming out of it – I saw an interview the other day with a youth worker who said he’d had breakthroughs with young men who’d become radicalised by manosphere content by asking them if they’d use the language they did about girls when talking about their mothers or sisters.

It’s brilliant to hear that work is being done, but it’s sobering to realise that for those boys, women only deserve respect when they’re reduced down and safely boxed into those roles. The narrators in the book don’t have such dangerous views but they do all have a very narrow sense of who Katie is and how she must therefore act: she’s an innocent daughter or a manipulative temptress or a protective friend. None of them see the potential for her to be all of these things and more, and that blind spot impacts them all.

3. Please tell me you were inspired by Legally Blonde when Tarun questions Camilla regarding who she follows on Instagram. Although not integral to the plot trajectory it felt very much ‘you can’t take a shower the day after getting a perm’! It is a light, but pointed, reflection on how we judge others based on seemingly trivial details. Was that a conscious influence, or was it more about making a subtle commentary on how people are scrutinised in today’s world?

   
   

Ha! I like to think that all barristers are inspired by that scene in Legally Blonde though I’m sure Tarun would never admit to watching it... But yes, I’m definitely interested in this new layer of scrutiny we’re subject to when it comes to our online lives – and of course this is true of Katie as well as Camilla, during the trial – even the most innocent or idle action we take on social media or an internet forum can be used to paint a picture of who we are or what we believe.

I’ve noticed that some people feel that just following a controversial figure on social media means you automatically agree with everything they say, when the opposite might be true. And I think sometimes we have this sense that our online lives are more anonymous, or less public at least, than our IRL selves, and there’s a false security in that. It opens a whole new avenue for someone with a forensic eye like Tarun to find weaknesses in a testimony, or to call a witness’s credibility into question.

4. Katherine’s story, at its core, is about a girl seeking independence and purpose. While her journey feels both unique and powerful, it’s also relatable. Was your intention to take what could be an ‘ordinary’ story and show how everyone’s journey can be extraordinary?

   
   

I’m so glad to hear it feels relatable, that was really important to me. Those formative teenage years are so complex and I think it’s when we first start to truly develop a strong sense of self – which is why, for Katie, it’s so painful to be reduced or labelled, to be silenced, in the way she is in the wake of the murders. She makes mistakes and bad choices as she tries to understand the world and find her way in it, in the same way we all do – but hers set her on a much darker path. I wanted there to be that sense that, had any one event not happened, or any one person acted differently or sooner, she might not have ended up in that dock.

5. The pacing of the mystery in Her Many Faces is so well-balanced—there were no forced red herrings, and the ending didn’t rely on introducing a surprise character. How did you find the right formula to keep readers on edge without giving too much away?

   
   

Thank you, that’s so great to hear. I think the structure really helped – having the five voices, each of whom have their own part to play in revealing what’s happened, makes it much easier to balance the pacing and exposition. Although it was a real headache to edit five different strands and work out the order of the chapters!

I used a spreadsheet for each draft, colour-coded by character so I could see at a glance how often each of them was speaking and when key information was being revealed. And I find it much easier to edit a physical copy of the manuscript, which for this novel meant I would sometimes spread the whole book out on the floor in front of me, so I could physically move chapters around and see how that would affect the pace. I know I could do that on screen far more easily, but it just doesn’t work for me!

6. I was hooked early on, and the part that really stuck with me was Tarun explaining why they visit crime scenes in person to ensure all the facts are right and no evidence is missed, such as ‘a single degree’s difference in the angle of a wall or a line of sight’. Were these details inspired by real cases, or was it purely a fictional touch?

   
   

That was actually inspired by another book I read during my research, Under the Wig: A Lawyer’s Stories of Murder, Guilt and Innocence by William Clegg QC. It’s such a brilliant, informative read, and he talks about how important it was to him to visit a crime scene (on one occasion, preparing a defence, he bumped into the prosecution’s barrister doing the same thing). He describes visiting a crime scene in Belarus, knee-deep in snow, and during another case taking a jury to a flat to determine whether a scream could be heard from two properties away as the prosecution had asserted. I was so struck by this, and I knew I wanted Tarun to be the kind of barrister who would obsess over every tiny detail of the evidence, who would have that sort of hands-on, no-stone-left-unturned approach to building his case.

7. On the topic of crime, are you a true crime fan? I couldn’t help but notice how the absence of a first-person POV from Katherine—and the narrators’ doubts about her—created the feeling of watching interrogation footage online. Have you watched these types of videos? I was reminded a lot of that setting. (If you’ve never seen these I’m sure you would be a fan!)

   
   

Yep, I’m a huge true crime fan! I think that, as well as interrogation footage (which I always find gripping – there’s a documentary called 24 Hours in Police Custody that’s amazing for this), I was inspired by the interviews in true crime documentaries. What’s especially interesting to me about these is that, for the most part, people are speaking about events of the past with their present-day knowledge influencing the way they remember things, or the way they want to retrospectively portray their part.

I wanted to play with that in Her Many Faces – to what extent is each man colouring his recollections of Katie in order to justify his own actions, or to fit with the version of her he now knows to be true? That kind of subconscious (or even conscious at times) revising of memory – and it’s something we all do – is such rich material to me, I find it fascinating.

8. Was there a character you intentionally crafted to evoke strong negative feelings in the reader, or did you aim for more morally complex portrayals? I was prepared to suddenly hate Max but it never happened!

   
   

I’m getting some fairly strong feedback about Conrad! I think a lot of us have known or dated a Conrad, so he was pretty easy to craft, and I’m glad readers are seeing through him so much more quickly than Katie does. A morally complex character is always more compelling to me though. I think that with Max, it would have been easy to lean into a really negative portrayal of this sensationalist, underhanded tabloid journalist, but I wanted to dig deeper. He has his own reasons for distrusting Katie, based on past experiences in his work, and even though he behaves reprehensibly at times, I liked knowing that there are layers there, and that there was hope that he could turn things around by the end of the novel. That’s much more interesting to me when I’m writing.

9. I typically find myself getting lost in novels with different POV’s for each chapter but the chapter titles and the different names used to refer to Katherine was a stroke of genius. What inspired you to adopt this format?

   
   

This was actually the starting point of the novel for me – I was thinking about the different nicknames I’ve had in my life, and the different selves those had come to represent when I look back; the elements of my personality I’d subconsciously adopted or played up to in each of those relationships. I love that idea that we are many things to many people, professionally and personally, and I started thinking about whether we exist in some liminal space between all of the identities we have to juggle in daily life or if someone can ever truly, fully know us. That evolved into the decision to use the five narrators’ POVs, to explore Katie’s character through that very fractured lens.

10. The use of five narrators with different names for Katherine was brilliant. How did you land on this number of voices? And why did you choose not to include Bobby as one of them?

    
    

It was kind of a process of trial and error! There were six voices in one draft – I experimented with using Sebastian, the bartender at March House, to give another perspective, but the balance didn’t feel right. Really, it came down to the versions of Katie’s character I wanted to present alongside her backstory and the events leading up to the murders, and I had to consider how many narrators I needed to do that without it feeling repetitive or slowing down the pace. I did toy with adding Bobby’s voice at various points during the writing and editing of the book, and I think I’d have really enjoyed coming up with his chapters.

But on a suspense level, for me it’s quite helpful that we only see Katie’s relationship with Bobby through John’s – and later, Max’s – eyes. I think it adds a question for the reader as to how Bobby really feels about his sister, and how he remembers their childhood compared to John’s often rose-tinted view (or Max’s assumptions). I like that we get to read between the lines there, so it felt like the right choice to stick to five voices.

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Book release date: July 15th 2025

Goodreads page here.

ISBN: 9780063395046