But ironically his first and most profound reading experience had nothing to do with his mother.  She was perhaps a bit of a literary snob and didn’t read crime fiction – but his older sister did, and Alex snuck into her room when he was about eleven or twelve, and looked at the books on her shelf.  He was immediately attracted by her selection of Agatha Christie novels, mainly intrigued by the lurid covers, and chose And Then There Were None to read.  He devoured it in a state of excitement and fear and didn’t sleep all night.  He was probably scarred for life – and all he wanted was more.  The next summer at the beach, he read nothing but Agatha Christie – these were the first adult books he ever read – and that summer, sitting by the sea, reading, wriggling his toes in the sand, are among his happiest memories.  

Agatha Christie made him into a reader – and a writer.  There is something about the structure of a whodunnit - crime, investigation, and final twist - that remains so satisfying to him, so beautiful.  As P.D. James said, a mystery brings order from disorder.  He always knew he wanted to write a book – and that it had to be that kind of book – a psychological detective story is how he thinks of The Silent Patient.  But mainly it must be said, when he eventually did write a novel, it was an attempt to replicate that first magical reading experience on the beach when he was a kid.  

He lived in Nicosia, Cyprus until the age of eighteen.  Greek culture, in particularly Ancient tragedy and mythology, has been a big influence on Alex.  The Greek myths are very much part of the culture in Cyprus. The tragedies are performed every summer, and Homer and the Greek tragedians are taught at school, in the way Shakespeare is taught in the UK or the US.  And he remains very grateful to his place of birth and education, as it meant he was given a whole mythological world in which to dwell as a writer.  The Greek myths are violent and magical and powerful; they are timeless stories about passion and heartbreak, love and loss. 

Alex left Cyprus to go and study, at Trinity College, Cambridge University in England.  He graduated with a MA in English literature.  University was slightly wasted on him – he wishes he could go back now and attend a few more lectures!  He got heavily involved in the drama societies as a student, and spent his time mainly acting on stage.  He was taken aside by his tutor in his final year, having performed in fourteen plays in three years, and told he would not graduate unless he stopped acting and start doing some work.  But looking back, he probably learned as much about writing from acting in those plays, as he did from studying Chaucer or Milton.  The experience of studying at Cambridge stayed with him – he visited the city frequently over the years, and used the experience as an inspiration, both the beauty of the city and its sense of mystery, as the backdrop for his second novel, The Maidens; which is set at a fictional Cambridge college.

Much as Alex loved acting, he wasn’t a good actor – he was far too self-conscious.  But he loved being part of a group and putting on a production. And this led him to spend a couple of years after graduation, where he lived in London, trying to make it as an actor.  Although he got an agent while at university, his acting career never took off, and he mainly worked in a pub – as well as being a runner in a film production company.  At the same time, he began to write, and wrote his first screenplay – which led him to become a screenwriter, when a film was produced from his first screenplay.  This film was a disaster, and thankfully never released – and Alex was advised by its producer to study screenwriting at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles.  Not a particularly flattering suggestion, perhaps, given that he had just produced Alex’s script, but it was the best advice he ever received.

Alex loved studying at the AFI.  He learned a great deal from the teachers, and from studying and breaking down the screenplays he loved.  And what he absorbed about filmic structure has stayed with him, and is a big part of how he writes.  Film remains a big passion for Alex; even more so than theatre.  He draws as much inspiration from directors like Alfred Hitchcock and Billy Wilder as he does from great writers like Tennessee Williams.  

He also loves the process of making a film, and being on set – which he likens to group therapy at its best: forging friendships and creating a kind of family.  (This is something he misses now, as there is nothing lonelier than being novelist!)  And although he had three screenplays produced, none of the films were successful, to say the least, and he ended up feeling disillusioned as a screenwriter.  Everything that can go wrong on a film set usually does go wrong; and he kept seeing scripts that he had spent years writing being destroyed or rewritten because director or actor had a ‘better’ idea or a location fell through or time or money ran out, necessitating cuts.  

When his screenwriting career didn’t take off as he would have liked, and he contemplated giving up – he turned to one constant in his life: therapy.  Having been in therapy since he was in his early twenties, he had a real interest in it, and considered training as a psychotherapist.  He got a part-time job working at a secure psychiatric community for teenagers in North London, and, at the same time, began studying therapy at a post-graduate level.  He left without qualifying because ultimately he decided he was a writer, not a therapist.  But everything he learned and experienced would prove useful later on. 

Finally, at the age of thirty-six, he said sat down to write that detective story he’d been putting off for twenty years.  The moment he started to think about the novel, he realised there was a snag: he knew nothing about detectives – but he knew a great deal about psychotherapists.  So he decided to make his hero a psychotherapist and have him investigate a psychological crime.  

He went back to his main influences – Greek myths and Agatha Christie.  All her novels are set in iconic enclosed locations – and so he set The Silent Patient in a psychiatric institute; partly because was one of the few locations Christie never used – and what better location for murder mystery?  It wasn’t an easy book to write, mainly because of the self-doubt that plagues anyone who attempts a long-term creative project.  Perseverance and maintaining self-belief is one the most important attributes of a writer.  It doesn’t get easier!

The phenomenal success of The Silent Patient was entirely unexpected.  It ended up selling in fifty territories and was a worldwide bestseller.  It transformed Alex’s life in all kinds of ways. When he wrote the book he wasn’t in a good place: he felt lost, lonely and very much a creative failure.  Since then, not only had he had the artistic validation that he craved, his world enlarged massively: he had and continues to have interactions with people all over the world who message him to say that his books have entertained them or touched them, or in some way affected them.  Not to mention the publishers and editors in various countries who have become good friends.  So he went from a place of feeling alone, to a place where he never felt less lonely.  It’s a happy ending, really.  The journey of becoming a writer has taken him back to where, and who he was meant to be.  He gets paid to write, which is something he would do for free anyway.  Which is a pretty wonderful life.