Bristol is the backdrop to new novel

On a recent Wednesday morning, Emily Koch pushes her six-month-old daughter Bobby along a lane backing onto one of the high walls around Horfield Prison.

It’s a route she takes a lot, close to where she lives in Bishopston – and it was the inspiration for her second novel, Keep Him Close. In the book, two mothers meet by chance. One of their sons is in the prison, the other son, now dead, is the reason for his incarceration.

Much of the new book was written at home, where she lives with her husband Matt. Their eldest daughter Gwen, who turned three in March, was still a babe in arms and 34-year-old Emily had to fit in writing around Gwen’s nap times and in the evening.

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Keep Him Close is a domestic drama, with Emily saying that it would have been quite easy for things to happen in people’s homes. “But that’s quite boring for the writer and the reader. You want to give some fresh scenery.”

A crucial scene in Emily Koch’s new novel takes place in Queen Charlotte Street car park – photo by Martin Booth

Like in Emily’s award-winning debut novel, If I Die Before I Wake, many of the locations featured are in Bristol.

One of the main characters lives in Horfield, the other Montpelier, with the story taking in the prison as well as the likes of Bishopston Library, Horfield Common, Bridewell police station, the bridge over the M32 by St Werburgh’s Community Centre and on the number 75 bus up Pigsty Hill.

Bristol Magistrates’ Court on Marlborough Street also features in the book, with Emily visiting during research for the book. In her previous job as a journalist on the Bristol Post, she covered cases at the court but this time spent a day looking for different details.

“As a reporter, I would be taking notes on the case. This time it was looking at the weird lighting, how the place smelled, what’s on TV in the waiting areas.”

Emily also visited the Queen Charlotte Street car park where a crucial incident in the book takes place. “That was a weird one,” she laughs. “It’s not really somewhere you go to hang out! I was walking around the car park, probably looking a little bit suspicious, again taking in the smells, trying to pick together exactly how the incident I needed to take place took place.”

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Read more: Storysmiths Books nominated for independent bookshop of the year

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Due to the coronavirus outbreak, Emily was forced to cancel her planned book launch party at Waterstones in the Galleries, and instead is hosting a virtual launch party on Thursday at 8.30pm on her Facebook page, where she will be talking about the book, answering readers’ questions and giving away a number of new books as prizes.

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After leaving the Post, Emily enrolled in the MA Creative Writing course at Bath Spa University. She later founded WriteClub with a fellow student on the course to help fellow writers.

Emily explains over a coffee in Boston Tea Party on Gloucester Road how her latest novel came about: “The starting point for the book was thinking, what would you do if someone had committed a crime against your family? And they were in Horfield Prison, and you live in one of these houses that are around here whose back gardens back onto the prison wall.

“How would that feel if that person is so close? That’s what got me started on this book.”

For those living particular close to the prison, the voices of the men inside can be heard, with friends and family sometimes talking to them over the walls, as well as throwing the odd piece of contraband over the perimeter.

Emily added that the novel could only have been set in Bristol: “It was fun to set in Bristol. Knowing I needed a certain feel for a certain scene and thinking where could that happen.”

Main photo of Emily Koch by Martin Booth

Read more: Breakfast With Bristol24/7: Emily Koch