With Reef Road, her latest psychological thriller, acclaimed author Deborah Goodrich Royce explores the psychology of criminals and their victims, while drawing from real-life events that happened when before she was born.

"My mother’s best friend was murdered in Pittsburgh on December 10, 1948," she tells PW. "The what, when, and, how are known in detail. What is not known is who committed this heinous crime. I have an overdeveloped interest in violent crime which came directly from the fact that a violent crime impacted my mother and, by extension, me."

In the novel, which publishes in January 2023, when a severed hand turns up on the beach in ritzy Palm Beach, the lives of two women—a lonely writer obsessed with an unsolved murder and a wife with a missing husband—intersect during the pandemic lockdown of 2020.

"I believe the quarantine was conducive to the atmosphere of claustrophobia and anxiety that permeates Reef Road," Royce says. "Reef Road is not technically about the pandemic, but the pandemic saturates all of it."

This newsletter was produced in partnership with Post Hill Press.

Crime Casts a Long Shadow: Close-up on Deborah Goodrich Royce

In Deborah Goodrich Royce’s psychological thriller Reef Road, the author draws inspiration from a real-life unsolved murder that has cast a long shadow over her family.

Royce spoke to PW about the lasting impact of generational trauma, the enduring fascination with true crime, and the experience of writing—and setting—a novel during pandemic lockdown.

Reef Road by Deborah Goodrich Royce

When a severed hand washes ashore in the wealthy enclave of Palm Beach, Florida, the lives of two women—a lonely writer obsessed with the unsolved murder of her mother’s best friend and a panicked wife whose husband has disappeared with their children—collide as the world shutters in the pandemic lockdown of 2020.

"Reef Road is magnificent. It feels utterly real, a novel of deeply personal context. It swerves between truth and lies—the lies that lead to an even deeper—and more devastating—truth. Though pure fiction, it reads as compellingly as a mixture of memoir and exposé. It has left me shaken to the core. Deborah Goodrich Royce writes with brilliant understanding of the mystery and occasional grace of trauma.”

—Luanne Rice, New York Times bestselling author

A young woman’s life seems perfect until her family goes missing. A writer lives alone with her dog and collects arcane murder statistics. What each of them stands to lose as they sneak around the do-not-enter tape blocking Reef Road beach is exposed by the steady tightening of the cincture encircling them.

In a nod to the true crime that inspired it, Deborah Goodrich Royce’s Reef Road probes unhealed generational scars in a wrenching and original work of fiction. It is both stunning and sexy and, like a bystander surprised by a curtain left open, you won’t be able to look away.

Read an Excerpt from Reef Road

Take a look at this exclusive excerpt from Deborah Goodrich Royce's latest thriller, Reef Road.

Reef Road Book Club Kit

This exclusive book club kit for Deborah Goodrich Royce's Reef Road contains a letter from the author, discussion questions, a playlist for the book, and a whole lot more.

The Reviews Are In

An enthusiastic 5-stars and all thumbs up for Reef Road, my pick for best book of 2022."

Check out this selection of glowing advance reader reviews for Reef Road from Netgalley and Goodreads.

Deborah Goodrich Royce on Reef Road

Check out this wide-ranging conversation with Deborah Goodrich Royce about her latest novel, Reef Road.

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Deborah Goodrich Royce

Deborah Goodrich Royce is the author of the widely praised psychological thrillers Ruby Falls (2021) and Finding Mrs. Ford (2019). A former film and television actress, she is remembered by soap opera fans for her role of Silver Kane, sister of the legendary Erica Kane, on ABC-TV’s All My Children. She later worked as a story editor for Miramax Films and was instrumental in the development of such films as Emma and A Wrinkle in Time. With her husband, Chuck, she restored the Avon Theatre in Stamford, Conn., which now operates as a not-for-profit dedicated to independent, classic, foreign, and documentary films and hosts lectures from film luminaries including Mira Nair, Richard Gere, and Chloe Sevigny.