Mystery Women Authors

Minette Walters

Biography

With her first four novels Minette has established herself as one of the most exciting crime fiction writers today. Three of her novels The Ice House, The Sculptress and The Scold's Bridle have been adapted as television dramas by the BBC.

Minette began her writing career as a sub-editor on the British Women's Weekly, then switched to writing romance novels, produced by the magazine. She then married, had two children and wrote her first crime novel aged 40. Minette lives in Hampshire, England. She writes for 12 hours a day and has a vast library of books about criminology and psychology for research purposes. She has also been a voluntary prison visitor since 1989.

Books

The Breaker

Twelve hours after a woman's body is washed up on a deserted shore on the south coast of England, her traumatised three year old daughter is discovered twenty miles away alone and apparently abandoned. Why was Kate Sumner killed and her daughter, a witness allowed to live? More curiously, why had Kate willingly boarded a boat when she had a terror of drowning at sea

Published Allen & Unwin 1998

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The Ice House

Content to live their genteel and sheltered life at Streech Manor, their
family estate, sisters Phoebe, Diana, and Anne suddenly find their sanctuary violated by a discovery of a corpse in the estate's ice-house.  Winner of the John Creasey Prize.

Published Allen & Unwin (Mass Market Paperbacks 1994)

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The Sculptress

Convicted of the brutal ax murders of her mother and sister, Olive Martin spends her days in prison carving tiny human figures out of wax. Rosalind Leigh is a best-selling author whose publisher jolts her out of writer's block by telling her to research a book about  Olive and the murders, or else. Though repelled by the idea at first, Rosalind soon becomes intrigued by her subject and begins to believe she may be innocent. She soon uncovers plenty of reasons to doubt the official police version of the killings and with Olive's help, untangles a sinister cover-up. The Sculptress won the 1994 Edgar Award for best mystery novel.

Published Allen & Unwin  (Mass Market Paperbacks 1996 USA)

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The Scold's Bridle

Few tears fall when rich, spiteful old Matilda's bloody corpse is found, her wrists slit and the ancient scold's bridle--an instrument of torture from the Middle Ages--clamped on her head. Matilda's doctor, one of the few people who actually liked the woman, is revealed to be the main beneficiary of the deceased's will--and the prime suspect of the police.

Published Allen & Unwin (Mass Market Paperbacks 1995)

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The Dark Room

Prominent photographer and millionaire's daughter, Jinx Kingsley wakes up in a private hospital. She does not remember the car accident. Or her fiancée leaving her for her best friend. Or the grisly murders of her fiancée and her best friend. With all the evidence against her, Jinx struggles to piece together memories of desperation and terror--memories that will save her or convict her.

Published Allen & Unwin (Mass Market Paperbacks 1997)

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The Echo

It must reflect something about our society that homeless people have replaced the damsel in distress as the vulnerable victim in crime films and books. In Minette Walters's mystery The Echo, the corpse belongs to Billy Blake, a tortured street person with a poetic soul (not for nothing is his name Blake) who has starved to death in a garage belonging to secretive Amanda Powell. A missing husband, a mysterious lover, and vanished millions add to the poisonous brew.

Published Allen & Unwin 1997

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Page created by Leone Moffat.

Last updated April 24, 2002