As summer draws to a close, most of us are returning to work with cheery, sun-dappled memories of our recent holidays– the fun, the sightseeing, maybe the new friends we made round the pool or at the hotel bar. Most of us won’t, it’s fairly likely, be using those happy memories or those friends as fuel for a blood-soaked, murderous fantasy. But if you’re best-selling crime writer Mark Billingham , that’s exactly what you do.

His latest novel, Rush of Blood , is based on something that happened to his friends.

“They had this couple over that they’d met on holiday,” explains the Barnet-based writer, “then, when the invitation was reciprocated a couple of months later, it was like walking into their own house. They’d copied their decor, the way they dressed – it was like they’d tried to steal their lives. It was really weird, and there’s a section in the book reflecting that.”

Rush of Blood is about three couples who meet round the pool of their Florida hotel and become friends. The holiday takes a tragic twist when, on their last night, the teenage daughter of one of their fellow holidaymakers goes missing – and then is found floating in the mangroves.

They remain in contact when they return home, and the plot centres around three increasingly fraught dinner parties as they get to know each other better. But of course, this being a crime novel, buried beneath these apparently normal exteriors are some dark secrets, hidden kinks, ugly vices... and then a second girl goes missing. Could it be that one of the characters has a secret far deeper than anybody could imagine?

“It’s almost a three-act play,” says Mark. “These three set-piece dinner parties get progressively more intense and weird. This novel is much more character-driven than my previous novels.”

Mark is the author of the DI Tom Thorne series, which has twice won him the Theakston’s Crime Novel of the Year award and the Sherlock Award for Best Detective, as well as earning him seven Crime Writers Association Daggers and being adapted for a TV series starring David Morrisey in 2010. Each of his previous 11 books has been a Sunday Times top ten bestseller.

Rush of Blood is Mark’s second venture into stand-alone thrillers, the first being 2008’s Into the Dark . “It’s all a bit nerve-wracking,” he admits, “it doesn’t matter how many books you publish, each one feels like the first, especially when it’s a stand-alone. But you’ve got to go off and do something else, take a break, to stop your series going stale.

“The main challenge is that you’re stepping outside your comfort zone, but that’s something that a writer should do. Having said that, it’s scary. You get halfway through, you’re a bit lost, and you think, ‘I wish I was writing another Thorne ’.”

But Mark plans to keep mixing the two up and has just finished writing the next in the Tom Thorne series, which is due out in summer 2013.

  • Mark Billingham is at Chipping Barnet library , his ‘local’, Stapylton Road, Barnet on Friday, September 21 at 6.30pm. Tickets are available from Waterstones, The Spires, High Street, Barnet. Details: 020 8449 8229