Minette Walters: My Glittering Career

Interviewed by Eve Tan Gee

As a crime writer, Minette Walters began at the top and has stayed there for the eight years of her creativity in the genre. Her first book, The Ice House, won the John Creasey Best First Crime Novel Award, and her subsequent books, The Sculptress and The Scold's Bridle, similarly gleaned prizes. This critical acclaim has been matched by an enthusiastic following among readers, with her new book The Shape of Snakes looking set to achieve the same. CT's Eve Tan Gee talked to her in the penthouse suite of her Marble Arch hotel.

Your first three books all won awards - did this hat trick have an intimidating effect on you?

I found the John Creasey Award for The Ice House the most intimidating, because I wasn't writing a series. I started to get really worried when I thought, "My second book is nothing like this: totally different theme, different people - how will it be received?"

Had you been told to avoid 'one-offs'?

Absolutely. I was told Ruth Rendell could only do it because she was so well known, and she had to use the Barbara Vine name. But even that early, I found myself very reluctant to write a series. So I was envisioning the possibility of a glittering - but very short - career.

A shooting star seen all too briefly?

That was my fear. That's why it was so gratifying when The Sculptress won the American Edgar Award. It was a huge relief - and then, when The Scold's Bridle won the Gold Dagger, I felt that my 'right to be different' was confirmed.

It seems that writers tire of series characters before readers do.

I knew I would. Look at any author who has done a series (starting with Conan Doyle and Holmes): you're in this syndrome where the writer wants to kill off the character, while the readers cry, "More, more!" Agatha Christie wanted to strangle Hercule Poirot (and I can't say I blame her).

So is your principal objection to a continuing character the difficulty of keeping him or her fresh?

There's another reason. One of the most often repeated criticisms of the crime genre is that it is formulaic writing: you use the same place, the same characters, but with a different death each time. In other words, you don't have to think too hard about the next book. In one way I can see that this is a criticism that can be levelled, and I felt that I really wanted to change direction with each book.

Which you've done very successfully - readers are never quite sure what to expect from a new Minette Walters novel.

I'm really pleased that so many people now are writing one-off crime novels - I'm not saying I instigated a trend, but it would be nice to feel I had just a little to do with this.

The other side of the coin is that you have no shorthand recognition for your characters with each book - no violin or cocaine, no vodka martinis.

I have been asked if I felt I would sell more books if I had a series, and this is one of those imponderables. But the answer is probably yes. But would I be pleased with the books I was writing? Probably not.

But would you sell more books? Your sales are pretty phenomenal - which suggests that many readers respond to the deeper psychological profile you can give to characters who only appear in one novel - along with the closure.

Well, I live in hope that those sales continue, because this is one issue on which I don't really want to compromise.

I'm going to put an idea to you: one-off crime novels with a strong psychological bias are always the ones which are taken more seriously in literary terms. Could this have been a factor with you, however unconscious? Is being taken seriously in this regard important to you?

Not really. I have to say that I set out with very few ambitions, simply because I knew how competitive the field was. I didn't want to say to myself something like, "I want to be published in thirty-six countries", or, to answer your question, "I want to be taken seriously as a writer". This was mainly because I didn't want to be disappointed if I failed. My one ambition was to write the kind of crime novel that I wanted to read.

How do you keep your response to the genre fresh?

I like to dip my toe into the traditions of the genre, and do something creative with them. The new book, The Shape of Snakes, is a good example of this. Looking at the history of the crime novel, there was a certain gritty realism with writers like Wilkie Collins and Dickens, however extravagant the plots. In the so-called Golden Age, despite the often wonderful writing, these social issues were sidelined, and now they're back with a bang. But even Christie, often criticised for the cloistered world she deals with, brought about a change in Miss Marple's lifestyle in the later books, reflecting social change.

So you're saying crime novels can sometimes be snapshots of their era?

There's no doubt. And I like to utilise social elements, which I've tried to do here, while never forgetting the demands of the narrative.

It's the death of a black woman, a woman living on the edge of society, who sets the plot in motion in The Shape of Snakes.

The Stephen Lawrence Report was fresh in my mind, and this was a way of transmuting that into this book. And by having a middle-class woman become obsessed with the case of a black woman who dies (which no-one else believes is murder), I was able to deal with such issues as commitment. But I was careful not to make my heroine some kind of saintly crusader - there's nothing more boring than that. She has her own agenda for doing what she does, however laudable the final result.

Through your character, you could be said to be dealing with white middle-class guilt.

That's one element, but by no means the most important one. And telling a story remains the first imperative. If I can sharpen the narrative with this kind of theme, fine. But the end result has to be the total involvement of the reader.