Twin Peaks, True Detectives, The Wicker Man – all were influences on local author Nicola West’s dark debut novel, Catch Us The Foxes.

Set in Kiama, the novel is a psychological thriller that follows a young journalist’s gruesome discovery at the town’s annual show.

Protagonist Marlowe ‘Lo’ Robertson has to decide whether she wants to help keep a dark family secret or break the biggest story of her career.

So Twin Peaks’ Homecoming Queen, Lara Palmer, becomes Catch Us The Foxes’ Kiama Showgirl, Lily Williams.

When Lo stumbles on the body of her best friend she discovers strange symbols cut into her back. Her father, Kiama’s Police Chief, makes her promise not to reveal this detail.

She says that her readers should be warned of some triggers in her novel – mental Illness, suicide, homosexuality – as her story is inspired by local urban legends and real crimes in the Illawarra, like the torture and murder of former Wollongong mayor Frank Arkell in 1998 after his home was exposed as the venue of paedophile parties.

Nicola grew up in Kiama and is the daughter of third generation police officer.

After high school, she moved to Sydney to pursue a career in journalism and initially started working on writing a memoir about some horrific medical issues she experienced as a young woman.

But a move back to Kiama after her apartment had flooded, coupled with an airing of the third Twin Peaks’ season The Return, set her on her novel writing path.

“Because I was watching Twin Peaks in my hometown, it suddenly made me realise what a perfect little murder town Kiama was. I immediately started Twin Peaksifying the town, working out who my Laura Palmer would be.

“Obviously because it’s an Australian town she couldn’t be a prom queen. So, I thought, of course, she would be a show girl. That was the catalyst for everything, and the novel all built from Lily Williams, my victim.”

Nicola has already received criticism from readers for locating this dark cultish story in a real town.

She knows it’s rare and “a tiny bit controversial” to use a real name for a place setting especially for the subject matter of her book which is quite heavy (Jane Harper’s The Dry is set in a fictional Victorian town). But says she has always been obsessed with Picnic at Hanging Rock and she loves the way that story blurs the line between fact and fiction, taking this real world location and turning it into a thing of legend.

“I see a lot of similarities between Hanging Rock and Saddleback Mountain, which is where a lot of the nefarious things happen in my book.

“Despite the horrible things I allege happen in Kiama, it really is a love letter to the town and the landscape.

“I wanted to achieve the same thing that Picnic at Hanging Rock had achieved and turn this place that was so familiar to me into this nightmare and a thing of legend.”

The title of her book Catch Us The Foxes is part of a bible verse in the Song of Solomon: “Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards that are in bloom,” which she says in essence means “Take preventative measures to protect this love from anything that could harm it.”

Catch Us The Foxes, by Nicola West. Published by Simon and Schuster. RRP $32.99