‘Privileged, self-absorbed travellers’: Why we love tales of trouble in paradise

“Bad stuff happens to them so it doesn’t have to happen to you”. From The White Lotus to The Beach, there’s a reason we love tales of trouble in paradise.

I used to have this thing where my holiday reading had to match my destination.

I’d dust down The Talented My Ripley when I was off to the Amalfi Coast or bring along The Magus if bound for a Greek island (you get the idea).

I saw it as a kind of double immersion in my chosen paradise. I’d travelled all that way, so why let a novel spirit me off somewhere else?

This all stopped, if I remember, when I took The Beach to Koh Samui and it felt like a murderous setting too far. I was always looking over my shoulder on that trip, could never quite relax.

Paradise in trouble … Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie version of Alex Garland’s besterseller The Beach.

Fast forward to 2024 and the so-called destination thriller is having a moment. More than a moment, actually, since its rise can be traced to the lockdowns of the pandemic, when we all yearned for the far-flung Shangri-las temporarily denied us. The habit stuck and I now read at least half a dozen a year. May I recommend The Wilds by Sarah Pearse, in which a woman disappears from a national park in Portugal, and The Trip by Phoebe Morgan, in which four friends’ jaunt to Thailand starts to unravel within moments of touchdown.

Why we should want to read these adrenaline-fuelled grippers when we’re supposed to be relaxing is psychologically intriguing. Maybe if your own dream break is ticking along exactly as planned there’s a deliciously wicked satisfaction to be found in someone else’s going horrifically wrong. Bad stuff is happening to them so it doesn’t have to happen to you, basically.

‘Stuff is happening to them so it doesn’t have to happen to you’ … Louise Candlish.

But do the same impulses inspire the writer? I thought about this a lot as I wrote my new thriller, Our Holiday, set in Pine Ridge, a dreamy English South Coast resort that wealthy city folk are used to treating as their summer playground – until entanglements between the haves and the have-nots lead to murder. It’s the sort of place, and perhaps even the sort of dynamic, that might be familiar to those who live in, or regularly visit, some of Australia’s many delightful coastal towns.

For me, the key appeal is the idea of people behaving differently when away from home. Released from our routines and responsibilities, we reinvent ourselves. We ignore our budgets, dress more adventurously, start to see ourselves in a whole new light. And if we transgress … well, it’s only a temporary rebellion. What happens poolside stays poolside – provided no one’s posted a picture of it and added geotags.

Wherever our fictional worlds may be, they only seduce if they feel authentic, right down to the last grain of sand. When writing Our Holiday, I wanted my readers to feel as if they are arriving in Pine Ridge on the quirky little chain ferry that narrators Perry and Charlotte take, later feeling the creak of wood underfoot as they step onto the veranda of their clifftop summerhouse, glass of rosé in hand, skin stinging from the sun.

‘Privileged, self-absorbed travellers’ … Jennifer Coolidge in The White Lotus.

The same principle applies to screen adaptations. Several of my books are being adapted for TV, and one, Our House, is already a ratings hit around the world. Stepping on set, where the titular house had been recreated, was a truly surreal experience. Rooms that had so far existed only in my – and readers’ – imagination were now a physical reality, with walls I could touch and sofas I could sink into. The attention to detail was mind-blowing: framed collages of childhood photographs of the actors who played the children, a fake magnolia tree decorated with individual handmade blossoms.

To my delight, I’m finding that the relationship between page and screen is a two-way street. My influences for Our Holiday were all from TV, specifically the glossy comedy-drama The White Lotus, with its collection of privileged, self-absorbed travellers. I wanted to create a similar ensemble of love-to-hate characters, which led to my writing many more points of view than I would normally attempt, and to being extra creative with the dramatic possibilities of the setting. The book opens with a house crashing off the clifftop into the sea and there’s no doubt I wrote this with half an eye on how it might get the first episode of the TV adaptation off with a bang (I admit I didn’t think too much about budget – there’s always FX!)

‘Love-to-hate characters’ … Australia’s Murray Bartlett, left, and co-stars in The White Lotus.

Ultimately, whether it’s on screen or on the page, a destination drama like Our Holiday needs to burn not just with the heat of the sun but also with jeopardy.

The threat of the unknown might come from the place itself or from people who inhabit it, but either way, you can be sure there’s going to be trouble in paradise.

Our Holiday by Louise Candlish is out now, published by HQ Fiction. You can check out The White Lotus and Our House, on Binge and Foxtel/BritBox/Apple respectively, or via Hubbl. And share your fave holiday reading titles and genres at The Sunday Book Club Facebook Group.

‘The threat of the unknown’ … Our Holiday by Louise Candlish.

Originally published as ‘Privileged, self-absorbed travellers’: Why we love tales of trouble in paradise