Thriller writer Samantha M. Bailey sleuthed out Olympian Maggie Mac Neil as her Canada Reads champion
Canada Reads will air March 17-20 on CBC TV, CBC Radio and CBC Books
As an Olympic athlete, Maggie Mac Neil is very familiar with suspense and ambition, two driving forces behind novels within the thriller genre.
Now, even after retiring from competitive swimming, Mac Neil continues to keep everyone on the edge of their seat with the adrenaline-charged novel she is championing on this year's Canada Reads — Samantha M. Bailey's Watch Out for Her.
Mac Neil is a Canadian swimmer and highly decorated athlete from London, Ont. She won three medals at Tokyo 2020: Gold, Silver and Bronze. She is also the first person to simultaneously hold titles in 100m butterfly in the NCAA, Olympics, world short course metres and world long course metres.
In 2024, after the Paris Olympics, she retired from swimming to focus on applying to law school.
Bailey is a journalist and writer of psychological thrillers. Her first novel, Woman on the Edge, was released in 2019 and was an international bestseller.
Her latest, Watch Out for Her, explores the fears of motherhood and surveillance in our daily lives.
Leading up to the Canada Reads debates, Mac Neil and Bailey met for the first time and gushed over one another's work before sitting down with Ali Hassan on The Next Chapter to let Canada know that this is one book to look out for this season.
Ali Hassan: There is a story about how you sleuthed out in advance, the person who picked your book for Canada Reads. Tell us that story.
Samantha M. Bailey: Occupational hazard of being a suspense author is finding things out. So I don't even remember when it was, all of a sudden, I noticed Maggie Mac Neil is following me on Instagram and then Maggie Mac Neil is looking at my stories. And I remember telling my family, "What's happening? I don't understand, is there something I don't know about? What is going on? Did I say something about swimming?"
Did I say something about swimming?- Samantha M. Bailey
For the life of me, I had no idea how a gold medal Olympian found me. I was very excited, I think I told a lot of people, actually — it was my going out to dinner story.
And then of course, I realized when I was told about Canada Reads and the producers had said, "Do you want us to tell you who the celebrity panellist is?" And I said, "Can I guess?"
AH: Maggie, this is a relatively new world to you. Did you know anything about Canada Reads before this started?
Maggie Mac Neil: Nothing. I was contacted by my agents probably in September, kind of right after I retired and I'd never heard of it. I mean, obviously I've been working with CBC for a while and I was telling my parents all about it and my dad was an avid reader, but he hasn't read for some time.
He was like, "Oh my God! This is so much more exciting than the Olympics." So I definitely have to do it for him and I had to go Google what it is I've gotten myself into.
AH: Samantha, this book, by the way, I'm sure you're well aware it's the first time in Canada Reads history that we've had a thriller featured on the show. How do you feel about that?
SMB: Like I'm hallucinating! I'm so proud. It is my favorite genre to read. I love to write, I think in Canada, we have so many phenomenally talented thriller authors.
For the Canada Reads audience, first to see genre fiction like last year with Carley Fortune's Meet Me at the Lake and this year with Watch Out For Her, to give genre fiction a seat at the table, to give mysteries and thrillers a seat at the table, I'm incredibly honoured.
To give mysteries and thrillers a seat at the table, I'm incredibly honoured.- Samantha M. Bailey
AH: Maggie, coming back to reading recently, you have read a lot of different stuff. What is it about thrillers in particular that attracts you as a reader?
MMN: One of the big things that my mom always told me as I was going through my career and making big decisions is that you can't make a decision until you have all the information first. And I think that's what I like the most about thrillers, is that you have to make the assumptions and you can imagine the ending with all the information that you have at the time.
Obviously it will come to a resolution, but in that way, I think it really mimics life and the way that I've tried to live it in the past and be more in the moment, but using the information that I have around me and what's available at the time to make the best decisions and choices in my life.
AH: Let's get into the book. In Watch Out for Her, we meet a mother who has just hired a young woman to babysit her son. Instead of trusting that all will be okay, she has nanny cams that she's watching. What drives this mother's suspicion?
SMB: Loss and fear. Sarah Goldman is a mother and a woman who lost her father when she was 13-years-old. She learned that lesson so young and then she's also suffered a miscarriage so Jacob is her rainbow baby, the baby you have after miscarriage.
So twice now she suffered an unexpected, shocking loss that she could never have prepared herself for and so she becomes someone who wants to control the uncontrollable, so she can prepare herself for the inevitable pain that's to come if and when she loses someone again.
AH: Maggie, the babysitter character who's named Holly, she knows she's being watched. She recognizes the nanny cams. She is of your generation and very comfortable with technology and all that comes with it. How did you see the surveillance aspect of this novel?
MMN: I think Holly and I are a couple of years different in age, I wouldn't say that made me identify with her any more, per se. It was interesting just kind of as someone that is ambitious and has goals, obviously I'm in a different position.
I think the innocence of a child is something that is really powerful in this book.- Maggie Mac Neil
I also have four cousins between the ages of three and six so I can also see where Sarah is coming from with wanting to keep them safe and wanting to keep an eye on them.
And I think I identified with that a lot just because if one of my cousins met someone and they attached themselves to them, you want to make sure that they were in a safe position. I think the innocence of a child is something that is really powerful in this book.
AH: To circle back to the book, but to also stay in the swimming world, you are used to this down to the wire nail biter type of thing. The suspense that accompanies you on race day in a pool. Is there any connection between that and the fact that you like the suspense in your reading?
MMN: I've never thought of it that way, but I'm sure the adrenaline kind of plays a part in it. The end of every chapter of this book is like, "Oh my God, that just happened. What's going to happen next?" I couldn't put it down and I think it's weird because I can't watch horror movies or thrillers … I think it must have something to do with adrenaline, but I've never really thought about it like that.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
