Minette Walters

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Minette Walters (born 26 September 1949) is a best-selling English crime and thriller novelist, who has received many awards for her writing and is published in 35 countries. Often described as the 'queen of the psychological thriller', she was one of the first writers within the genre to achieve international success without a series character.

Born in Bishop’s Stortford to a serving army officer, Capt Samuel Jebb (Royal Signals) and his wife Colleen, the first 10 years of Minette’s life were spent moving between army bases in the north and south of England. Following the death of her father from kidney failure in 1960, Minette spent a year at the Abbey School in Reading, Berkshire, before being granted a free Foundation Scholarship at the Godolphin boarding school in Salisbury.

During a gap year between school and Durham University, 1968, she went to Israel as a volunteer with The Bridge in Britain, working on a kibbutz and in a delinquent boys’ home in Jerusalem. She graduated from Trevelyan College, Durham in 1971 with a BA in French. Minette met her husband Alec Walters (University College) while she was at Durham and they married in 1978. They have two sons, Roland and Philip.

Walters joined IPC Magazines as a sub-editor in 1972 and became an editor of Woman’s Weekly Library the following year. As an early pioneer of women getting their feet on the property ladder, she took her first mortgage at 23 and supplemented her salary by writing romantic novelettes, short stories and serials in her spare time. She turned freelance in 1977 but continued to write for magazines to cover her bills.

Her first full-length novel, The Ice House, was published in 1992. It took two and a half years to write and was rejected by numerous publishing houses until Maria Rejt, Macmillan Publishers, bought it for £1250. Within four months, it had won the Crime Writers' Association John Creasey award for best first novel and had been snapped up by 11 foreign publishers. With her next two books, The Sculptress and The Scold's Bridle, Walters won the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award and the CWA Gold Dagger respectively, giving her a unique treble. She was the first crime/thriller writer to win three major prizes with her first three books.

Walter’s themes include isolation, family dysfunction, rejection, marginalisation, justice and revenge. Her novels are often set against real backgrounds and real events to draw her readers into the ‘reality’ of what she is writing about. With no series character tying her to particular people, places or times, she moves freely around settings – a sink estate (Acid Row), a Dorset village (Fox Evil), a suburb of London (The Shape of Snakes) – although every setting is ‘claustrophobic’ to encourage the characters ‘to turn on each other’.

Walters describes herself as an exploratory writer who never uses a plot scheme, begins with simple premises, has no idea ‘whodunit’ until half-way through a story, but who remains excited about each novel because she, along with her reader, wants to know what happens next.

As part of a British project ‘Quick Reads’ to encourage literacy amongst adults with reading difficulties, Walters wrote a 20,000 word novella called Chickenfeed. In competition with other best-selling authors such as Ruth Rendell, Maeve Binchy and Joanna Trollope, 'Chickenfeed' has now won two awards as the best novella in the ‘Quick Reads’ genre. It has also been translated into several languages.

Five of Walters’ novels have been successfully adapted for television.

Walters is an honorary Doctor of Letters at Bournemouth University and Southampton Solent University. She is patron of numerous charities, a long-time prison visitor and a fervent advocate of Victim Support. Walters’ trip to Sierra Leone on behalf of Médecins Sans Frontières helped raise awareness for the terrible devastation caused by the war in that country and served as inspiration for her eleventh book, The Devil's Feather.

In September 2007, Walters released her twelfth book, "The Chameleon's Shadow", in the UK.

On March 3-7 2008, BBC2 aired Murder Most Famous, a five part TV talent contest series, where Walters tutors and judges six competing celebrity writers, with the winner having their crime fiction novel published by Pan Macmillan on World Book Day 2009.

Contents

[edit] Bibliography

In addition to full-length novels, Walters has written feature articles for magazines and the broadsheets, some short stories including "English Autumn, American Fall" and two novellas, The Tinder Box, published in 1999, and Chickenfeed, published in 2006. The latter was published for World Book Day 2006 as part of the 'Quick Reads' initiative.

[edit] TV adaptations

Walters' first five books were adapted for television by the BBC and her eighth book, Acid Row, is currently under option with Company Pictures. Two of Hollywood's current top actors - Daniel Craig and Clive Owen - had early starring roles in adaptations of The Ice House and The Echo, respectively.

[edit] Awards and nominations

  • 2001 – The CWA Gold Dagger Award (shortlist): Acid Row
  • 2002 – The CWA Gold Dagger Award: Fox Evil
  • 2006 – Quick Reads Learners' Favourite award: Chickenfeed
  • 2007 – Coventry Inspiration Book Award: Chickenfeed

[edit] Further reading

Forselius, Tilda Maria. "The Impenetrable M and the Mysteries of Narration: Narrative in Minette Walters's The Shape of Snakes." CLUES: A Journal of Detection 24.2 (winter 2006): 47-61

[edit] External links


This article about a novelist from the United Kingdom is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.