Minette Walters

Minette Walters is one of the most successful crime fiction writers in the world. Her first full-length novel, The Ice House, was published in 1992, and won the Crime Writers' Association John Creasey award for best first novel. Her second novel, The Sculptress, which was inspired in part by an encounter she had as a volunteer prison visitor, won the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award. Her third novel, The Scold's Bridle, then won the CWA Gold Dagger, giving her a unique treble.

The Last Hours (2017) saw Minette moving in a different direction with a historical novel set in 1348, the year the Black Death came to England. The story is brought to a thrilling conclusion in The Turn of Midnight (2018). Set three centuries later, The Swift and the Harrier, is her latest book and was published in November. You can find Minette's books on our catalogue.

Who were your heroes as you were growing up and when did you first start writing?

Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Louis Armstrong, Edith Piaf, Nina Simone, The Rolling Stones, Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham, Dorothy Sayers, Daphne du Maurier and, a decade later, Queen. (Freddie Mercury remains my hero to this day).

At university, I studied French and loved the works of Samuel Beckett and Jean Paul Sartre. Believing I could emulate them, I wrote a play for the BBC about the last two people left alive on earth. It was shockingly bad and rightly rejected. I had better success with a 15' short story which was read by Penelope Keith on Radio 4's Morning Story.

How did the publication of The Ice House in 1992 change your life?

It gave me a new career. Prior to The Ice House, I worked as an editor on a woman's magazine and wrote short romantic stories and novelettes in the evening, which paid well but weren't very rewarding. My ambition had always been to write a full-length crime novel, so I decided to try. The novel took a long time to write and a long time to sell, and I was close to finishing The Sulptress when my agents phoned to say that MacMillan had offered a £1250 advance for The Ice House. I bought a bottle of Champagne to celebrate on the back of a promise of money that had yet to be paid... but what the heck! I'd become a crime writer.

What is your writing routine and does it differ from when you started out?

I work Mediterranean hours - 8.00 a.m. to 1.00 p.m, and then 6.00 p.m. to 9.00 p.m. When I started, my children were young and I had to write around them - be it nursery and primary school hours or after they'd gone to sleep. Such habits become ingrained, and mornings and evenings remain my most productive periods.

What sparked your interest in historical writing?

Living where I do in south-west Dorset. Our county is home to the Jurassic Coast and dinossaur fossils, iron age hillforts, Roman roads, fortifications and aquaducts, Norman castles, the entry port for the Black Death, Jacobean manor houses, Civil War battles, the Monmouth Rebellion, the brutal punishments meted out by Judge Jeffreys... The list is a long one, and I wanted to capture some of it in fiction, particularly as there are many worse criminals in history than there are in crime fiction.

What can Suffolk readers expect from your latest title, The Swift and the Harrier?

A fast-paced read about England's brutal Civil War, which resulted in more deaths as a percentage of the population than World War 1. The action takes place in Dorset, but it could be any county, because the struggle for power between Charles I and Parliament was all encompassing. My protagonists are Jayne Swift and William Harrier, who represent different sides of the political divide. Jayne, a physician who espouses neutrality, comes from a Royalist family, while William, who conceals his backgound, is a committed Parliamentarian. The novel explores the best and worst of humanity during a divisive conflict, over which ordinary people had no control.

Library loans are dominated by crime and thriller stories of all types from psychological crime through to Richard Osman. What do you think this says about us as a society?

That we love to be thilled, engaged and entertained. Games and puzzle solving are inherent to our natures, and most of us like to win and be right. A suspense writer's job is to keep the reader guessing, the reader's job is to use his/her own imagination to out-guess the author. I can't think of a more exciting form of reader/author interaction.

You were a prison visitor for many years. Was that what prompted you to write the Quick Reads stories for adults learning to read?

I was certainly shocked to learn that over 50% of the prison population were illiterate or semi-literate, but I'd also been involved in an adult literacy project when I left university. I worked with several adults over a three-year period and it was immensely rewarding to help them master reading. The difficulty was that the only books available at their level were children's books, which is what inspired Gail Rebuck to start the Quick Reads initiative. It was a wonderful idea, and one that I was proud to be part of.

Is there anything you can share with us about your latest project?

I'm still enjoying the challenge of making history accessible and exciting to people who may not know the period about which I'm writing. Good or bad, we are what we are because of the generations that went before us.

The best advice you were ever given was...?

Think for yourself.

Can you tell us one thing about yourself that your readers may not know?

Until his recent peaceful death at the age of seven, a rooster inhabited my office. I brought him in three years ago after he’d been mauled by his son; and, once revived, he chose to stay, snuggling up to my sweet-natured Golden Retrievers, sitting on my lap or running to the kitchen for food. He was a one-off, and his contributions to my flights of imagination for The Swift and The Harrier were invaluable. I miss him.