Top crime writer Anne Perry back to where it all began
Feb 27 2010 by Liz Lamb, The Journal
HISTORICAL novelist Anne Perry is returning to her roots next month. LIZ LAMB chats to the best-selling author who started her writing career while living in Northumberland
HER Victorian detective novels have sold millions of copies across the world and she has been hailed as one of the 100 Masters of Crime by The Times newspaper.
It’s clear Anne Perry is a woman who knows how to write a good detective novel.
More than 20 million of her books are in print worldwide and she has topped the bestsellers lists in numerous countries.
Her first book, The Cater Street Hangman, was published in 1979 and was the first in a series featuring Victorian policeman Thomas Pitt, which has gone on to be the longest sustained crime series by a living writer.
In 1990 Anne started a second series of detective novels with The Face of a Stranger and the most recent of these, The Dark Assassin, appeared in the New York Times Bestsellers List.
Her writing career began while she was living in Hexham, Northumberland, in her early 20s. Now 71, she still has strong links with the North East and next month she will be returning to the region to talk about her work.
Anne says: "I used to live in Betty Surtees House in Newcastle, which is famous, and I worked in Bainbridge’s and Fenwick.
"It was a long time ago now, more than 40 years ago. My mother was Northumbrian, she was born in Alnwick, and my father used to be a minister on Holy Island.
"My grandfather Joseph Reavley was born in Durham."
It was while living in Hexham that the author started to put together the first semblance of a book, writing the first draft of Tathea, which was published a few years ago.
"I didn’t get it into order, it was more ideas for the book rather than form," explains Anne.
"I’d thought about writing for a long time.
"People would say, ‘You are never going to get anywhere if you don’t actually write it’.
"I kept saying, ‘I will do it when I am ready’. Then one day I said ‘I am going to do it’ and I have been writing ever since."
After leaving the North East, Anne went to America. A friend from Betty Surtees House had also moved there.
