He’s facing court martial for dereliction of duty and Friday has to drop everything and travel 3000 kilometres to solve the case.īut when she arrives in Oslo, she discovers Binky’s is just one of many cases she has to crack. In the latest book, Friday Barnes 10: Undercover, the young detective embarks on an adventure to help Binky, who may or may not have been attacked by a polar bear. You get the character and who she is and we try to create an exciting moment to give a sense of what the book is about.’ How Google Maps helped the author write her new book ‘Then we have the covers where she’s climbing a ladder or holding a torch to her chin - there’s always a big action scene and a high-stakes scary moment and we really try to capture that. ‘The cover with the binoculars, the one with the glass to the wall - these things will occur in the book at some stage. ‘We always try to come up with something physically dynamic,’ Spratt says. ‘She goes to Norway the nature is overwhelming - she’s in an arctic climate with polar bears, so there is a lot to scream about.’Īll covers in the Friday Barnes series feature a close-up of the young detective’s face, which jumps out from the shelves and signals the mystery and challenges within each book. Friday is dealing with a lot of stuff in this book and it gets pretty intense. ‘It’s about being overwhelmed by life and nature and the scream of existence.

‘In The Scream, he is standing on a bridge and it is as if he emotionally heard the scream of nature at sunset,’ she says. Spratt says The Scream was the ultimate inspiration for the latest book cover, as it captured the same themes she wanted to express in the latest story. Spratt had her daughter imitate the pose to create a first sketch of the cover, turning to another iconic recreation of the pose - the film poster for Home Alone. I thought, the book is set in Norway and The Scream is from Oslo.’ ‘I needed a cover that was a close-up of Friday’s face,’ Spratt says. Spratt wanted Friday to mimic the iconic pose in Edvard Munch’s The Scream, to illustrate her overwhelming feelings of being amongst nature in Norway and, of course, having to solve another mystery. The cover of the new book encapsulates the intense journey Friday embarks on in the latest story, according to author R.A Spratt, who has revealed the process behind creating the concept. The highly-anticipated tenth book in the Friday Barnes series is coming, with our favourite young detective on her latest mystery-solving adventure to Norway and beyond.

Friday barnes book 1