Minette Walters - Page 1
Paperback - Pan (2004) |
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First British Edition Macmillan (2003) |
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Disordered Minds
'When people are frightened, there's always a presumption of guilt if your face doesn't fit...'
In 1970 Howard Stamp, a retarded twenty-year-old, was convicted on disputed evidence of brutally murdering his grandmother in her Dorset home. Less than three years later he was dead, driven to suicide by self-hatred and relentless bullying by other prisoners. A fate befitting a murderer, perhaps, but what if he were innocent?
When 34-year-old anthropologist Dr Jonathan Hughes re-examines Stamp's case for a book on injustice, his research into the written evidence leads him to believe that Stamp was wrongly convicted. But is the forgotten story of one friendless young man compelling enough to persuade Jonathan to confront the real murderer?
One person believes it is. George Gardener, 60, has been trying to bring Stamp's case to public attention for years and has unearthed new evidence that might exonerate him. But Gardener needs the young academic on board if it is to be used to maximum effect.
On the face of it, there is no similarity between the illiterate Stamp and the highly educated Hughes, yet their lives resonate through their damaged childhoods and their mutual sense of exclusion. With the threat of war in Iraq dominating British hearts and minds, there begins a battle closer to home: an attempt to prove a grotesque miscarriage of justice.
But if a dangerous killer is still at large...
... then Gardener must first help Jonathan defeat his own demons...
'Brilliant - heartrending and shocking, clever and demanding' Daily Mail
'A powerful, acute and vivid work from a staggeringly talented writer' Observer
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First British Edition Macmillan (2002) |
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| Paperback - Pan (2003) |
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Fox Evil
When elderly Ailsa Lockyer-Fox is found dead in her garden, dressed only in nightclothes and with bloodstains on the ground near her body, the
finger of suspicion points at her wealthy, landowning husband, Colonel James Lockyer-Fox. A Coroner’s inquest gives a verdict of ‘natural causes’ but the gossip surrounding James refuses to go away.
Why? Because he’s guilty? Or because resentful women in the isolated Dorset village where he lives rule the roost? Shenstead is a place of too few people and too many secrets. Why have James and Ailsa cut their children out of their wills? What happened in the past to create such animosity within the family? And why is James so desperate to find the illegitimate child - his only grandchild - who was put up for adoption when she was born?
Friendless and alone, his reclusive behaviour begins to alarm his London-based solicitor, Mark Ankerton, whose concern deepens when he discovers that James has become the victim of a relentless campaign which accuses him of far worse than the death of his wife. Allegations which he refuses to challenge . . . Why? Because they’re a motive for murder ... ?
‘Walter’s world is dark and ambiguous; Fox Evil is the work of a writer at the peak of her confidence and supreme ability’ Marcel Berlins, The Times
‘Fascinating… Minette Walters is on her best form in her gripping new novel’ Sunday Telegraph
| Paperback - Pan (2002) |
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First British Edition Macmillan (2001) |
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Acid Row
The name the beleaguered inhabitants give to their 'sink' estate. A no-man's land of single mothers and fatherless children- where angry, alienated youth controls the streets.
Into this battlefield comes Sophie Morrison, a young doctor visiting a patient in Acid Row. little does she know that she is entering the home of a known paedophile...and with reports circulating that a tormented child called Amy has disappeared, the vigilantes are out in force...
Soon Sophie is trapped at the centre of a terrifying siege, with a man she has come to despise.
Whipped to a frenzy by unsubstantiated rumour, the mob unleashes its hatred. Against authority...the law...and 'the pervert'. 'Protecting Amy' becomes the catch-all defence for the terrible events that follow. And if murder is part of it, then so be it.
But is Amy really missing?...
'Breaking all the rules of popular fiction, Minette Walters asks as much of her readers as many literary novelists, and yet she offers them a book as gripping as any thriller' Natasha Cooper, TLS
'Walters handles the teeming cast and the buildup of danger and suspense authoritatively, from the opening whispers to the inevitable fatalities. Her real achievement here, however, is in the oddly sympathetic paedophile, the angry heroine, her ex-con rescuer, the pitifully unformed teenage provocateurs, Amy's wilfully irresponsible mother and her smoothly complicit father, and an underage victim who turns out to be just as exploitative, though a lot less powerful, than the plausible scoundrel who preys on her... the compulsive strands in Walters' largest web yet... all show the damning effects of helplessly raging long-term victims thrashing out to hurt anyone in reach.' Kirkus Reviews
Hardback
Macmillan
(2000) |
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The Shape of Snakes
November 1978. The winter of discontent. Britain is on strike. The dead lie unburied, garbage piles in the streets - and somewhere in West London a black woman dies in a rain-filled gutter. Known as "Mad Annie", she was despised by her neighbours. Her passing would have gone unmourned and unnoticed but for the young woman who finds her and believes - apparently against reason - that Annie was murdered.
Yet whatever the truth about Annie - whether she was as mad as her neihbours claimed, whether she lived in squalor as the police said, whether she cruelly mistreated the cats found starving in her house - something passed between her and Mrs. Ranelagh in the moment of death that binds this one woman to her cause for the next twenty years.
But why is Mrs. Ranelagh so convinced it was murder, when, by her own account, Annie died without speaking? Why does the subject make her husband so angry that he refuses to talk about what happened that night? And why would any woman spend twenty painstaking years uncovering the truth - unless her reasons are personal?
`Profoundly intriguing and deeply satisfying' Daily Telegraph
Minette Malters is on top form... quite simply, a tour de force' Observer
Hardback
Macmillan
(2004) |
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The Tinderbox
In the small Hampshire village of Sowerbridge, Irish labourer Patrick O’Riordan has been arrested for the brutal murder of elderly Lavinia Fanshaw and her live-in nurse, Dorothy Jenkins. As shock turns to fury, the village residents form a united front against Patrick’s parents and cousin, who report incidents of vicious threats and violence.
But friend and neighbour Siobhan Lavenham remains convinced that Patrick has fallen victim to a prejudiced investigation and, putting her own position within the bigoted community in serious jeopardy, stands firmly by his family in defence of the O’Riordan name.
Days before his trial, terrible secrets about the O’Riordans’ past are revealed to Siobhan, and the family’s only supporter is forced to question her loyalties. Could Patrick be capable of murder after all? Could his parents’ tales of attacks be devious fabrications? And, if so, what other lies lurk beneath the surface of their world?
As the truth rapidly unfurls, it seems that Sowerbridge residents need to be very afraid. For beneath a cunning facade, someone’s chilling ambition is about to ignite ...
‘The only factors that unite Minette Walters’ works are her penchant for dark psychological perception and their excellence’ The Times
‘Minette Walters succeeds in creating a chilling, claustrophobic world where death comes almost as a relief from the sense of focused evil she builds with consummate authority’ Daily Express
‘Humane intelligence enables Walters to twist and turn her plot in ways that haul the reader through the pages ... breathtaking’
Daily Telegraph
‘Minette Walters patrols the darkest areas of the human heart. Her writing demonstrates an acute grip on psychological truth at the point where violence meets domestic gothic’
Daily Mail
‘Grips like steel’ Mail On Sunday
More Praise for Minette Walters
The Ice House
‘Terrific first novel with a high Rendellesque frisson count’ The Times
The Sculptress
‘A devastatingly effective novel’
Observer
The Scold’s Bridle
‘A gothic puzzle of great intricacy and psychological power’ Sunday Times
The Darkroom
`Violence may well be offered to anyone who tries to part you from this marvellous, dramatically intelligent novel. It shimmers with suspense, ambiguity and a deep unholy joy’ Daily Mail
The Echo
‘It grips like steel ... Plays havoc with your emotions, keeps you awake, ends with joy and relief ... Passion, compassion, intelligence and romance is what Walters offers with no quarter for squeamish cowards’ Mail on Sunday
The Breaker
‘Stands head and shoulders above the vast majority of crime novels that make it into print. Existing fans will love The Breaker, new readers will be instant converts’ Express
The Shape Of Snakes
‘Breaking all the rules of popular fiction, Minette Walters asks as much of her readers as many literary novelists, and yet she offers them a book as gripping as any thriller’ Times Literary Supplement
Acid Row
‘Humane intelligence enables Walters to twist and turn her plot ... Acid Row is a breathtaking achievement’ Daily Telegraph
About The Author
In Her Own Words…
After graduation from Durham University, I joined IPC Magazines as a sub-editor on a romantic fiction magazine, writing articles, short stories and 30,000 word novelettes to help pay the mortgage. However, when the youngest of my two sons began full-time education in 1987, I started The Ice House. It took two years to write, another two to sell and was finally published in 1992. Meanwhile, I was already at work on The Sculptress (published in 1993)!
The Ice House, I'm proud to say, won the Crime Writers' Association John Creasey Award in the UK for best first novel and was translated into several languages within six months of initial publication. When The Sculptress won the Edgar Allen Poe Award in America, I was absolutely thrilled! It’s very satisfying to know that your work strikes chords across continents. I receive letters from all over the world and am always fascinated to find how well crime fiction travels.
My third book, The Scold's Bridle (published 1994), won the CWA Gold Dagger Award in the UK, which gave me a rather unique treble: winning three major prizes with my first three novels. Since then, I have been shortlisted several times with my later novels, both in the UK and abroad.
To date, I have written 10 books and been published in 35-plus countries around the world. My latest, Disordered Minds, is out now in hardback and will be out in the summer of 2004 in paperback.
In addition to my writing, I'm a patron of numerous charities in Dorset and the UK, and I try to give as much of my time for free as I can to libraries, schools, charities and prisons. I recently won the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award for Fox Evil, published in 2003. I donated the money from the award to Medecins Sans Frontieres, one of the aid organisations I support. They were kind enough to invite me to visit Sierra Leone recently, where I was able to see first-hand the excellent work they are doing with their mother-child health initiatives. You cannot visit a project like this without being bowled over by the professionals that are giving up 6 to 9 months to go to a country and work.
I currently live in Dorset with my husband and when I am not travelling or writing, I adore watching TV, listening to the radio, walking, swimming, playing tennis, sailing, doing crosswords, quizzes, and gardening. However, my absolute favourite way to relax is DIY. I find the physical disciplines of decorating, plumbing and carpentry are so different from the cerebral disciplines of writing novels that DIY comes as such a relief when I finish a book!
Bibliography
N.B. dates and publishers in dark red indicate British First Editions. Dates and publishers in black indicate recent reprints.
Disordered Minds
(Macmillan,
2003)
Pan Pbk Aug 04
Fox Evil
(Macmillan,
2002)
Shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger Award, UK
Pan Pbk Aug 03
Acid Row
(Macmillan,
2001)
Shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger Award, UK; also for the Grand Prix des Lectrices d’Elle, France
Pan Pbk Aug 02
The Shape of Snakes
(
2000)
winner of the Pelle Rosencrantz Prize, Denmark
Macmillan Oct 00
Pbk Aug 01
The Tinderbox
(
1999)
Jun 04
The Breaker
(Macmillan,
1998)
The Echo
(Macmillan,
1997)
Pan Pbk 1998
The Dark Room
(Macmillan,
1995)
Shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger Award, UK
The Scold's Bridle
(Macmillan,
1994)
Winner of the CWA Gold Dagger Award, UK
The Sculptress
(Macmillan,
1993)
Winner of the Edgar Allen Poe Award, USA; also the Macavity Award, USA
The Ice House
(Macmillan,
1992)
Winner of the CWA John Creasey Award, UK
Disordered Minds
WebPage: 
by Minette Walters
