3 minutes after the verdict was read in The Crown vs. Max Hastings:

Holly Jackson started writing stories from a young age, completing her first (poor) attempt at a novel aged fifteen. She graduated from the University of Nottingham with an MA in English, where she studied literary linguistics and creative writing. She lives in London and aside from reading and writing, she enjoys playing video games and watching true crime documentaries so she can pretend to be a detective. As Good As Dead is the final part of the trilogy, following New York Times bestsellers A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder and Good Girl, Bad Blood. You can follow Holly on Twitter and Instagram @HoJay92.

As ever, the first thanks must go to my agent, Sam Copeland. Thank you for being the best sounding board / agony aunt / bad cop / good cop. This all started with me pitching you girl does school project about old murder case back in June 2016 and look where we are now! A whole-ass trilogy is the technical term. But there wouldn’t even be one book if you hadn’t taken a chance on me back then and told me to write this idea, so thank you! (Although let’s not give you ALL the credit – though I’m sure you’d love to take it!)

Next, I want to thank booksellers, who do such a fantastic job of getting books into the hands of readers and have continued to do so despite the incredible challenges of this past year. I am so so grateful to you for your enduring enthusiasm and dedication to books and reading, and for the huge part you have all played in the success of the AGGGTM series. To the bloggers too, who dedicate so much of their time to posting reviews or shouting about books they have enjoyed. I could never thank you enough for all the love you have shown the AGGGTM series, and I am so looking forward to seeing your reactions to As Good As Dead.

To everyone at Electric Monkey who all work tirelessly to help turn my Word documents into actual, physical books. It takes a village. Thank you to Sarah Levison for expertly navigating this monster-sized book with me, and for recognizing exactly what I wanted it to do. Thank you to Lindsey Heaven for all your hard work overseeing this series from the beginning. Thank you also to Lucy Courtenay, Melissa Hyder and Susila Baybars for helping me whip this manuscript into shape. Thank you to Laura Bird and Janene Spencer; it’s always a magical moment seeing the layouts for the first time, when the story actually first starts to look like a real book. Thank you to Tom Sanderson for the incredible cover design; it is so dark and fitting for this finale and I couldn’t have asked for a better cover. I hope no-one looks at duct tape the same way again. Thanks as always to the star, Jas Bansal, for everything you do and for being such a marketing / social media genius. One of my favourite parts of publishing each book has been watching the buzz you so expertly create pre-publication. Thank you also to Kate Jennings, Olivia Carson and Amy Dobson for all your amazing hard work in making sure people hear about the book. Thank you to Sales and Rights for all you do in getting these books out into the world, with particular thanks to Ingrid Gilmore, Lori Tait, Leah Woods, and Brogan Furey. And a special thank you to Priscilla Coleman again for your fantastic artwork, and for bringing the DT Killer to life so expertly in the police composite sketch.

After the last year we have had, it would seem a glaring omission for me to not express my overwhelming gratitude and admiration to all NHS workers. Your everyday heroism and bravery during the Covid-19 pandemic at times made my contribution to society feel very small (typing away made-up stories about made-up people), but I want to thank you for being so inspiring and compassionate, and for looking after us all during this horrific year. You truly are heroes and the national health service is an incredible privilege that we should protect at all costs.

Thank you to my writer friends, as always, for helping me navigate the tricky waters of publishing, especially during these lockdown releases. And for Zoom game sessions so I could virtually escape my flat and my deadlines (temporarily). Thank you to my Flower Huns for keeping me sane (remotely) during the pandemic. I look back fondly on those weekly quizzes. I can’t wait to do more IRL playing this year – although no more quizzes, yeah?

Thank you to my mum and dad as always for their unwavering support and for believing in me when no-one else did. I think you probably always knew I was going to be a writer from a young age, but thank you for fostering my love of stories by letting me have a childhood full of books, and video games, and TV and films. Not a second of it was wasted. Also thank you Dad for your first reader comments, and for understanding the book perfectly. And thanks Mum for telling Dad that you ‘felt sick’ when reading the book – that’s when I knew it was doing exactly what I wanted it to do!

Thank you to my sisters Amy and Olivia for their constant support, and for showing me just how important sisters are. Pip has had to find her own sisters (Cara, Naomi, Nat and Becca), but I was lucky enough to have two from the very start. I’m sure your influence will be all over every example of sibling banter / bickering I ever write, so thank you for that!

To my nephew, George, who says I am his favourite author, despite being ten+ years too young to read my books, top marks for you! To my new niece, Kaci, for supplying the cuteness to keep me going during a dreadful year of deadlines, and for also being a badass pandemic baby. And especially to my niece Danielle, who is almost old enough to read these books now. Several years ago, when Danielle was about nine years old, she was studying creative writing at school, and she told me that all the best stories end in a dot dot dot... Well, Danielle, I have finished my first ever trilogy with a dot dot dot - I hope you’re proud (and I hope you’re right!).

Thank you to Peter, Gaye and Katie Collis as ever for being my early readers and for being the best second family one could ask for.

To Ben, who is my cornerstone, my forever partner-in-crime. Without you, none of this would have been possible and Pip would never have seen the light of day, let alone made it to the end of book three. Thank you.

After writing a series that is so heavily influenced by true crime, it would seem strange for me to end without one comment on the criminal justice system and the areas in which it fails us. I feel a helpless despair when I look at the statistics of rape and sexual assault in this country and the abysmal rate of reporting and conviction. Something isn’t right here. I hope the books themselves do the talking for me on this front, and I think it’s clear that parts of these stories come from an angry place, both personal anger at the times when I have been harassed and not believed, and frustration at a system of justice that sometimes doesn’t feel very just.

But finally, to end on a lighter note, I want to thank all of you who have followed me through every page right to the end of book three. Thank you for trusting me, and I hope you found the ending you were looking for. I certainly did.

Pip knew where they lived.

Everyone in Little Kilton knew where they lived.

Their home was like the town’s own haunted house; people’s footsteps quickened as they walked by and their words strangled and died in their throats. Shrieking children would gather on their walk home from school, daring one another to run up and touch the front gate.

But it wasn’t haunted by ghosts, just three sad people trying to live their lives as before. A house not haunted by flickering lights or spectral falling chairs, but by dark spray-painted letters of Scum Family and stone-shattered windows.