KAREN FITZGIBBON is an actor/producer/director/writer/educator based in Limerick city.
She has been co-writing, co-producing, acting in and directing plays and short films with community groups and professional groups for over fifteen years.
The World’s End is the first in a series of novels, introducing Private Investigator, Lana Bowen. Her latest book Tell The Truth is a similarly gripping tale: a woman stands accused of a brutal crime — the murder of her husband.
As the trial begins, twelve strangers are tasked with deciding her fate. But Marion McMahon, at the centre of it all, is keeping a secret — one that could change everything. For reasons of her own, she refuses to speak. In her mind, she is safer behind bars than she is free.
Among those selected for jury duty is Stephanie Fitzgerald. Restless and increasingly disconnected from her failing marriage, she finds herself drawn into the intensity of the case — and to a fellow juror whose attention proves difficult to ignore.
Meanwhile, private investigator Lana Bowen is brought in to take a closer look. Asked by a former colleague to speak with Marion, she senses there is more to the story than has been told.
But uncovering the truth will not be straightforward — and some secrets are kept for a reason.
But the real engine behind Fitzgibbon’s writing is not just plot — it is something more personal.
The tension, the sense of being trapped, the idea that the mind and body can work against each other — these are not imagined. They come from experience.
The body keeps a score
BY KAREN FITZGIBBON
I first started driving when I was sixteen. I grew up in a rural area so learning to drive was an essential skill if you wanted to go anywhere, and my father took me out on the road the minute my learner permit arrived. I loved driving — the freedom of it, the independence, the sense that you could simply get up and go.
Roll on forty years to November 2019 and all that changed.
I had a full-blown panic attack while driving at 100 kilometres an hour on the motorway. It came out of nowhere, or at least that’s how it felt at the time.
In truth, life had been quietly building pressure. My mother had just suffered a stroke and her condition was worsening by the day.
Work was relentless. The children were at that in-between stage — school, college, constant demands — and I was trying to keep everything moving, everything balanced.
But life had always been busy. I had managed before.
There had been no warning signs. No earlier episodes. I had driven on motorways for years, in Ireland and across Europe, without a second thought.
Only weeks before, I had travelled from Limerick to Dublin Airport to collect my daughter. I felt confident behind the wheel. I felt safe. I knew, if anything, that the real dangers lay on rural roads, not the motorway.
And yet, on that day, everything shifted.
I was taking my usual route to visit my mother. My youngest son, about twelve at the time, sat beside me in the passenger seat. We were chatting, or at least I thought we were — normal, everyday conversation.
I indicated to overtake an articulated truck and moved out into the lane. Halfway alongside it, I checked my rear-view mirror and saw a car approaching behind me.
Nothing unusual. Just another driver overtaking. But then, suddenly, something inside me changed.
A wave of fear — sharp, immediate, inexplicable — washed over me. I felt trapped. Completely trapped. I had been in that exact position countless times before, overtaking with ease, but on that day I couldn’t accelerate.
My heart began to hammer against my chest. My palms were slick with sweat. My grip on the steering wheel weakened. It was as though the connection between my mind and my body had been severed.
My limbs turned to jelly.
I tried to press down on the accelerator, but my leg wouldn’t respond.
The car behind me was getting closer, edging forward, its presence suddenly overwhelming. I eased my foot off the pedal instead, instinctively slowing down, even though every rational part of me knew that was the wrong thing to do.
The driver behind flashed her lights. She sounded her horn. But I couldn’t move.
Time seemed to stretch. I don’t remember exactly what happened next, only that at some point the car behind fell back, creating enough space for me to indicate and pull in behind the truck. I caught a glimpse of the driver as she passed — a look of confusion, perhaps frustration — before she continued on.
Moments later, I pulled onto the hard shoulder and switched on my hazard lights.
My heart was still racing. My body felt heavy, drained. I sat there trying to make sense of what had just happened. Exhaustion, I told myself. Stress. Worry about my mother. It had to be something like that.
I looked over at my son. He had his headphones on, absorbed in whatever was playing on his phone, completely unaware. And I remember thinking, very clearly, that I had almost killed us both.
After a few minutes, my breathing steadied. I gathered myself and rejoined the road, taking the next exit. I convinced myself it was a one-off — something that had simply passed.
But it wasn’t.
On the way home, it happened again. This time as I passed a slip road.
A car was merging into traffic on my left and the same feeling rose up — that tightness in the chest, that loss of control. My body locked. My heart raced. For a moment, I was certain we were going to collide.
We didn’t. But something had changed permanently. I have not driven on a motorway since.
In the days and weeks that followed, I felt a mix of anger and disappointment in myself. I kept asking the same questions: Why had this happened? What had triggered it? Was there some hidden fear I had never acknowledged?
Gradually, I adapted.
I began to take alternative routes — the old national roads, the winding country lanes, the longer way round. I discovered the setting on Google Maps that avoids motorways. Journeys that once took an hour now took two, sometimes more, but I could manage them. I could stay in control.
I learned to prepare. The radio on. Breathing steady. Routes planned in advance. Everything designed to keep that feeling at bay.
Over time, I came to understand what had happened.
That sense of being trapped — it is one of the most common triggers for motorway panic. The speed, the limited exits, the absence of a quick escape — all of it feeds into the brain’s alarm system. It reads danger where there is none. It tells the body to react.
And sometimes, the body listens more closely than the mind.
Because what do you do when your body refuses to follow your instructions? When logic tells you one thing, but your limbs simply won’t respond?
That question stayed with me, and it found its way into my writing.
When I began the Lana Bowen series, I wanted to give her something real — a struggle that people would recognise, even if they had never experienced it themselves. Lana doesn’t have panic attacks while driving. Hers come when she is alone, when she feels isolated, when the world narrows in around her.
Like me, she learns techniques to cope. Breathing exercises. Grounding. Therapy. It doesn’t cure everything, but it allows her to keep going, to live her life.
Because that, in the end, is what you do.
You find a way forward, even if it’s the long road rather than the fast lane.
And you come to accept that sometimes the body keeps a score of its own — one that you have to learn, slowly and patiently, how to read.
See More: Author, Karen Fitzgibbon, Limerick
