Anthea Fraser interviewed
by Peter Lovesey on the publication of her fiftieth novel Sins of the Fathers, on
April 30th from Severn House.
Congratulations, Anthea! Awesome is an over-used word these days, but it
really does apply here. I can only gasp in admiration. Many of the books, I
know, are about crime investigation, but you have a wider range than that, don’t
you?
I suppose my books are still
mainly about crime investigation, though in the switch from straightforward
police procedurals to the viewpoint of those to whom it is happening, I’ve
tried to portray the emotions involved both in committing the crime and solving
it – whydunnit rather than who. Families in particular fascinate me, and the
nuances between them.
You once wrote that your books tend to be about ordinary people leading
uneventful lives who are suddenly catapulted into danger. Is that a common
thread in most of your novels, the supernatural and romantic suspense included?
Yes, I think so!
Getting back to your beginnings as an author, I believe you were
creating stories even as a child before you learned to write and announced your
intention to become an author at the age of five.
Did your education at Sandford School and Cheltenham Ladies’ College
instil a love of writing? Were there teachers who encouraged you and books that
inspired you at this time?
The headmistress of
Sandford was somewhat eccentric, addressing her pupils as ‘lovey’ and was more
like a grandmother than a teacher! She took a great interest in my writing and
kept me supplied with an endless succession of what we called rough notebooks,
which I filled with poems and short stories.
I can’t think of any
particular teacher at Cheltenham who inspired me, though I always enjoyed
English. But it was in the house library that I first discovered crime fiction,
and overdosed on Agatha, Dorothy L Sayers, Leslie Charteris and many others.
And after school . . .?
I wrote continuously
during my childhood and even composed poems and lurid novels in my teens that
never saw the light of day, but I didn’t do any writing at all for the first
few years of my marriage.
Bringing up your two daughters must have come first. But at some stage
you took a course at the London School of Journalism. How did that influence
you as a writer?
I read a short story in
Good Housekeeping, and thought ‘I could do better than that!’ I knew I had to
prove it, which was why I took the LSJ course in short stories (as they didn’t
do novels) and it was invaluable in teaching me discipline. I had a personal
tutor and no time limit and over several months received fifteen printed
lessons on dialogue, plot, characterisation etc. When the children went to bed
for an hour after lunch I’d seat myself at the kitchen table and do my
homework. It must have been lesson 8 or 9 before we were actually asked to
write a short story, and I had just completed one – The Man in the Raincoat, a ghost story – when, flicking through Honey magazine at the hairdresser’s, I
saw they were holding a short story competition and promptly sent it off.
It was listed as a runner
up, on the strength of which, and at the recommendation of the editor, Rosemary
Gould of Laurence Pollinger wrote to offer me their services. The incredible
thing was that my mother’s books had been published through Pearn, Pollinger
and Higham before the agency split into three!
Your first novel, Designs of
Annabelle (1971) was with Mills & Boon, who are notoriously difficult
publishers to please, insisting that their authors keep to their writing
guidelines. Did you write it specifically with them in mind? After this success
did you have ambitions, as so many do, to become a regular Mills & Boon
author – and perhaps make a fortune in the process?
Since the women’s
magazines were the main market for short stories and all they wanted was romance,
that perforce was what I wrote. However, after a year or two, Rosemary
suggested I write a novel, and insisted it too should be romantic as that was
what ‘my public’ would expect! I can remember asking if I could just have a
little murder at the end, but was firmly refused! I didn’t want to become a
regular writer of romance, and when M&B turned down one book because –
horror of horrors! –the hero was divorced, I decided enough was enough.
Was the book ever published?
‘Yes, Robert Hale took it and it was also included in an edition of the
Doubleday Romance Library.’
Laura Possessed, in 1974, was clearly a major advance for you, selling to America as well
as in Britain. Would you like to say how it came to be written?
Just as I’d decided on a
break from romance, another competition gave me a chance. It was for the best
crime novel by a woman, to be published in both hard and softback here and in
the States. So I wrote another ghost story, Laura
Possessed, which was apparently on the short list until the last ten days.
The sponsors asked to see the short list and three of the four took it (Hodders
didn’t!) but it was taken up by Milton House Books.
So that was how Laura saw the light of day, but actually
I’d written the basis of it years before in my teens. So once again my success
was due to a ghost story, and as The Exorcist was currently popular, I was
advised to stick with the supernatural.
Do unseen forces hold a particular interest for you?
Yes, I admit the supernatural
fascinated me and still does.
Due to the success of Laura, I was asked by the Society of
Women Writers and Journalists to give an hour’s talk, nine months hence, on the
supernatural, with questions afterwards! Since I knew nothing at all about it,
I spent those months researching possession, witchcraft, time travel, etc, and
that research stood me in very good stead for another six books!
But I believe Breath of Brimstone
was placed with another publisher. Why was that?
Collins declined it because it featured the devil! However
Dodd, Mead, Corgi, FA Thorpe, Severn House and Soundings later took it!
A Shroud for Delilah in 1984 was another breakthrough book,
your first with Collins Crime Club, and introduced Chief Inspector David Webb.
It had terrific reviews. Booklist called it “a superbly crafted, riveting,
page-turner of a book.” Would you care to say something about your long
association with Collins?
When interest in the
supernatural began to wane, Rosemary suggested I switch genres, and as I’d
always loved crime fiction, it was the natural choice. Actually, all the
paranormal books had a crime element in them, so I was probably always leaning
towards it.
I had written about a
third of A Shroud for Delilah without
any police involvement at all, because everything I knew about procedure was
gleaned from TV. And then I had another incredible stroke of luck. At a dinner
party I was seated next to a real life detective inspector and my husband Ian
promptly told him I was writing a crime novel! He invited us both to spend a
whole day with him at Snow Hill police station, and promised he’d answer my
questions. He could hardly have expected I’d arrive with a list of 86, but I
also took a tape recorder and he talked into that, enlarging on the questions
as he went. He then gave me a copy of the list of instructions for new
detectives arriving at a crime scene – gold dust! Throughout the whole of the
Webb books he gave me his phone number as he moved around the country and was
an enormous help. Once I phoned him and said ‘I have to get the murderer into
the house, even though it’s under surveillance. How can I do it without making
the police look stupid?’ And he said, ‘Give me ten minutes. I’ll get the boys
in and see what we can work out!’ And they came up with the ingenious solution
that the radio battery gave out at the cruial moment! Naturally I always gave
him a copy of the book, to thank him for helping me with my enquiries!
I was very happy during my
years with Collins, and Elizabeth Walter became a personal friend, inviting me
to her home for lunch on several occasions. She was very fond of Ian.
Between 1987 and 1999 you wrote a wonderfully inventive series of twelve
books based on the lines of the old counting song “Green Grow the Rushes O” and
featuring David Webb. It must have been a challenge fitting a police
investigation around each of the quotes from the song, particularly as most of
them are Biblical in origin. Would you like to say something about the way you
plotted and wrote the books?
I never set out to do a mini-Sue
Grafton! The verses of the song had always intrigued me, particularly, for some
reason The Nine Bright Shiners, and I
wrote that with no intention of doing any others. Then I suddenly thought:
suppose The Six Proud Walkers were
members of a family? So I wrote that, and gradually more and more ideas came, until
eventually I realized I’d have to complete the set. I admit that Eleven that Went up to Heaven proved
quite a challenge!
You served as secretary of the Crime Writers’ Association from 1986 for
ten years and yet still managed to write more than a book a year (thirteen, I
believe) in the same period. Was this the most demanding time of your writing
career?
I thoroughly enjoyed my
ten years as CWA Secretary, and am grateful that it was pre-email! Somehow
everything seemed more personal and friendly then – but perhaps I’m just
getting old! It was good, though, to meet members and hear speakers after every
Committee meeting, when all the Committee members stayed on for the general meeting.
I don’t know that it made too many demands on my writing – in fact, it was my
lifeline after Ian died.
I particularly remember how bravely you soldiered on.
I couldn’t write for a
year but I had to keep going with correspondence, Minutes etc, and then Liza
Cody, bless her, literally bullied me into writing a story for the CWA
anthology, and that got me back into the swing.
Ian was a warm and witty man well known to all of us crime writers,
always at your side at conferences and social occasions. Would you like to say
something about his involvement in your writing career?
I remember the very kind
piece you wrote for Red Herrings after
he died. He thoroughly
enjoyed everything to do with the CWA, especially meeting people whose books he’d
been reading for years, and on one occasion had a long chat with Penny Wallace.
Her father, Edgar Wallace, was one of Ian’s favourite authors, and Penny kindly
sent him one of the Sanders of the Rivers
series.
At Dick Francis’s Diamond
Dagger celebration at Saddlers’ Hall, Ian happened to be standing near the door
when Michael Denison and Dulcie Gray arrived. Someone called to Dulcie, who
veered off, leaving Michael and Ian facing each other. With his usual charm, Michael
came forward with his hand out and said, ‘Michael Denison’. Ian took it, and
answered ‘Ian Fraser’, to which Michael replied ‘Of course!’!! Ian dined out on
that for years!
In recent years you created a favourite character of mine, Rona Parish,
a journalist and biographer whose projects frequently lead her into unravelling
crimes. Was this a deliberate attempt to get way from police investigation?
I’d written sixteen of the
Webb books and wanted a break. So I wrote a couple of stand-alones, Past Shadows and Fathers and Daughters, and thoroughly enjoyed the change of scene
and characters. I’d not actually intended the final Webb book, The Twelve Apostles, to be the last in
the series, but after a couple of years’ break forensic science had moved on, I’d
lost contact with my Superintendant (as he was by then) and it would have been
almost impossible to get back into the routine. So I embarked on what started
out as a third stand-alone, but decided almost at once that I was missing the
comfortable feeling of writing a series and that the background and characters in
this one could ‘have legs’. Which was how the Rona Parish series took shape.
And this time, after ten books, I did take the conscious decision that the
series had gone as far as it could, and took care to tie up any loose ends.
Does this kind of story require different plotting skills?
My main concern was that
Rona shouldn’t just keep stumbling over dead bodies, but that each case she was
involved in was a feasible involvement, causing occasional resentment from the
police rather than the Murder She Wrote
formula, where they would gratefully exclaim, ‘How lucky you happened to be
there, Miss Fletcher!’
You have said you enjoy writing in series because you are already at
home in the places you are writing about and looking forward to meeting your
characters again, but there are also more than twenty not in series, including
five under the pen-name Vanessa Graham. You describe certain of them as
romantic suspense. Is it difficult to reconcile romance and crime?
No, I didn’t find it
particularly hard. I was reading and enjoying Mary Stewart’s books at the time,
and she was my inspiration!
Although you sometimes use fictional names for the places you use as
settings it is no secret that Broadshire, where David Webb is based, is the
real county of Wiltshire and Erlesborough is the market town of Marlborough.
Your Rona Parish books and the stand-alone novels range more widely and a
strong sense of place is a constant feature. Does the setting make the stories
more real for you?
Yes, the setting is
crucial and I sometimes work on that before the characters or plot. I have a
very visual imagination and can see the places I describe and follow my
characters as they go from one point to another. I was very much influenced in
this regard by the Nero Wolfe novels of Rex Stout. The ‘old brownstone’ became
so familiar and, most importantly, was exactly the same in every book, so that
the reader felt at home there and could find his way from room to room.
Although Broadshire was a made-up county, I was careful to use names for the
towns and villages that fitted in with the locality, and drew copious maps,
both of the county and of the individual towns and villages as they featured in
the series. The town plans showed police station, shops, churches and
characters’ houses, so that I knew which direction they turned in as they came
out of their gate. The same, of course, applied with the Rona Parish books.
Your fiftieth novel, Sins of the
Fathers, begins with a marvellous twist guaranteed to intrigue and involve
the reader for the rest of the book. Without giving too much away, can you say
if this was also the idea that sparked the novel?
Some time ago I had an
idea for a short story to be called Away
Day in which a young man received a first-class rail ticket in the post,
with no message or explanation and which, when he went on that journey, caused
him to be framed for murder. The story never got written but the germ of it
remained so I reworked it for Sins of the
Fathers. At first I’d intended the whole book to be set in Scotland, but
soon realized that the lead-up had to be in real time.
It’s a beautifully plotted book, if I may say so, and demonstrates that
your writing is as inventive as ever after fifty books. Finally, what has
experience taught you that would be helpful to a new writer wanting advice?
I don’t know that I’ve any
new advice to offer, just to read as much and as widely as you can. Personally I’ve
never done ‘drafts’ but start every day mercilessly editing what I wrote the
day before, to ensure the same ‘tone of voice’. In the early days I planned the
whole book in advance, detailing events chapter by chapter. Then came the time
when I was in such a hurry to start writing that I couldn’t be bothered to plan
and jumped straight in. It was unnerving at first, and I kept finding a
character I’d intended to kill in Chapter 3 was still around several chapters
later, but it all worked out in the end and that’s basically how I write today.
Published by Severn House, April 30, 2018 Hbk Price £20.99
