Tell us about your debut novel All the Lonely People, first published in 1991. How easy was it to sell?

I’d wanted to become a crime writer ever since, at age eight, I discovered Agatha Christie. I still have the series of ‘mystery novels’ that I wrote aged ten, and when
I was twenty-three I wrote a thriller about football, but I realised it wasn’t good enough to merit publication. Because my ambition to write was so important to me, I was fearful that if I was rejected many times, it would have a devastating effect on my morale. So I resolved to be patient and not to submit anything I wrote until I thought it deserved to be published (and by then I’d read a huge amount of crime fiction, so I had a good idea of the required standard).

As a Liverpool lawyer myself, I came up with the idea of a series featuring a Liverpudlian solicitor (not a self-portrait!) – I thought the urban setting was atmospheric and I worked hard on coming up with a strong plot. My aim was to combine a gritty contemporary milieu with Golden Age style puzzling and tropes. I still think that was a good concept, although at the time the Golden Age was firmly out of fashion and no critic ever mentioned the Golden Age elements. I was lucky enough to find an agent who believed in me as a writer and in the book. After many revisions, the book was published. It sounds easy, but it took a long time. However, it was a book I believed in, and I think that is always important. Most of us have a touch of impostor syndrome, but unless one has faith in oneself and one’s writing, it’s hard to cope with the setbacks that are part and parcel of the writing life.

You have written several series. What are some of the challenges you face in maintaining a lengthy series? How do you keep the stories fresh while keeping true to the character?

This is an absolutely key issue. The danger of a long series is that the writing become samey and formulaic. There’s nothing wrong with that, if that’s what you want to do – in fact, it can be a good way to achieve commercial success, because many readers like long series. However, I’ve never written a series longer than eight books. I have always been determined to make each novel within a series a bit different from all the others in the same series, despite the common factors. This is quite a challenge, and it slows down the writing process, but personally I think it makes for better books that are more satisfying to write.

One way to achieve this variety is to experiment with storytelling structure – something I do quite a lot (although not, I hope, in an irritatingly obtrusive way). The over-riding question is: what do I, as a writer, want to achieve? I’ve always had a pretty clear idea about this (which isn’t to say that I’ve always managed to achieve it!) My firm aim is always to be excited myself about what I write. Because if I’m not excited, how can I expect readers to be? This can be a risky approach, especially if you’re not writing ‘for the market’ and if what you are writing doesn’t coincide with the fashion of the moment, but I find it liberating rather than self-indulgent. And, on the whole, perhaps thanks to good fortune, this approach has worked well for me.

Your Lake District mysteries have been widely acclaimed. What is it about that setting that appeals to readers?

The Lake District isn’t a huge area in terms of square miles (although the winding lanes mean that it can take a long time to get anywhere!) but it’s absolutely crammed not just with scenic beauty but also with fascinating history – the Roman remains at Ravenglass, the literary connections with Ruskin, Beatrix Potter, de Quincey, and so on. So as a setting, it’s full of potential for a writer – and, bearing in mind the number of small, sometimes relatively remote, almost secret communities – not lacking in criminal possibilities.

Each of my books is set in a different part of the Lakes, another way of maximising variety in the way the stories are told. A background theme of the series is the pressures on the English rural way of life in the 21st century.

I like writing books that have several layers; it doesn’t matter if some readers don’t pick up on all the underlying themes as long as they are entertained by the people, the place, and the mystery. All these ingredients, coupled with Hannah’s relationships with Daniel Kind and her colleagues in the police, and quite intricate plotting make the books a joy to write.

You often populate your stories with ‘collectors’ of a kind. Why do you think collectors make good characters in a mystery or crime novel?

A very perceptive question, and one that I’ve never been asked before – so thank you! I like collecting things myself (signed and inscribed crime novels, for instance!) so I suppose to some extent I’m writing about what I know, or at least about an instinct I understand and empathise with.

Collecting can be great fun and it affords me enormous pleasure, but of course in fiction it offers scope for all kinds of character flaws as well as offering potential for detection and quests of one kind or another.

Do you have a favorite book or series you’ve written?

It’s very hard to choose, partly because I care a lot about every book I write and partly because one is always tempted to pick the most recent title. Of the Harry Devlins, I’m especially proud of Yesterday’s Papers, while in the Lakes series, The Dungeon House and The Crooked Shore (aka The Girl They All Forgot) are real favourites, partly because I think they are good examples of how to avoid a formulaic approach to writing series crime fiction. The Rachel Savernake books are extremely varied, and it’s almost impossible to pick one rather than another, but I’m really happy with the latest, Sepulchre Street (aka The House on Graveyard Lane).

What’s on your ‘To Be Read’ pile ? What do you like to read?

It’s not so much a pile as a mountain range, I’m afraid. Even though I’m a fast reader, I have literally hundreds of books at home that I’m keen to read. Most are crime novels or short story collections, but I’m also interested in Victorian fiction and I read a lot of non-fiction.

I enjoy the work of many contemporary authors, plenty of whom are friends, so it would be invidious to pick out just two or three. In the crime field, as well as Agatha Christie, Anthony Berkeley, Henry Wade, and Dorothy L. Sayers, I was a great admirer of Ruth Rendell, Reginald Hill, and P.D. James. But really, I could list dozens of names. I focus mainly on crime fiction, but I like a wide variety of sub-genres, as well as translated fiction.