In fact, Minette is no stranger to much of the South West, a region that has played a key role in many of her books. “My husband, Alec, and I lived in Romsey for 12 years before we moved to Dorset seven years ago, and as a child I went to school in Salisbury. It’s an area I know well. I enjoy using real places as the backdrop to my stories.”
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She was a prison visitor at Winchester prison for 12 years. One of her “men” still pops in to see her |
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After her father died of injuries sustained during World War II, Minette was sent to board at The Godolphin School in Salisbury. ”I know it’s unfashionable to say you enjoyed your school days, but I really did,” she says, as we chat and sip coffee in the orangery of her house. Her own positive experiences led to her sending her two sons, Roland and Philip, to private school.
“I went when I was 12, and it made me very independent, both emotionally and practically. Plus, since the school was keen for girls to go to university, it pushed me academically. I was also made head girl, which gave me a crash course in public speaking that has stood me in good stead ever since.”
After reading French at Durham University, where she met her husband Alec, she became a magazine sub-editor and began writing romantic novelettes to help pay the mortgage.
“I think I’d always wanted to write, but I’ve always been much more interested in the dark side of man’s behaviour than the romantic,” she chuckles. “I’d hide myself away as a child and read Grimm’s Fairy Tales to get that little frisson of fear. Even real murders intrigued me. When James Hanratty was hanged I was fascinated by the case.”
But it wasn’t until 1987, when Minette was 37, and her youngest son Philip began school, that she started writing her very first crime novel, The Ice House. “It took me two years to write, and for the next two years my agent simply couldn’t sell it. But I didn’t lose heart because Alec kept telling me how good it was.”
Her persistence paid off—two years later, The Ice House, a murder mystery based around the discovery of a rotting body in the grounds of a secluded estate, was finally published. It won the Crime Writers’ Association John Creasey Award, and within six months it had been translated into several languages.
Suddenly, she was rocketing to international fame—something she still finds a bit unnerving—and her next two books, The Sculptress and The Scold’s Bridle, each won major awards. Since then she’s become one of the best-selling crime writers in the business. Gazing through the orangery windows, she happily admits that it’s the fruits of her criminal mind that have paid for the lifestyle she enjoys today, including the indoor pool. Written in mosaic tiles along the bottom is The Echo, a tongue-in-cheek tribute to the novel that paid for the pool where she swims every day.
“It’s a most enjoyable way to earn a living,” she smiles. “I’m fascinated by people—I’ll talk to anyone—and human behaviour is rarely boring. If you lined up 20 strangers on the streets of Dorchester, and said: ‘Tell me about yourself’, you’d find them far more interesting than the people we’re supposed to find engrossing, such as Robbie Williams or David Beckham.”
It was her fascination with people that led her to become a prison visitor, which she did at Winchester Prison for 12 years. Many of her “men” ended up going straight, and one still regularly pops in to see her.
“I did it for the same reason I wanted to be a policewoman—except I was turned down for being too short!” she giggles. “It’s nothing to do with baddies and goodies, but because I think people are interesting, and being a different role model to someone who’s never known anything but drink, drugs or whatever, can really work. And besides,” she adds, “a conversation about ram-raiding is much more interesting than hearing someone at a dinner party banging on about school fees or their new BMW.”
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