Biography

In 1983 she was named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (O.B.E) by the Queen.

A Governor of the BBC, 1988-1993.

British crime novelist, author of twenty books and creator of sleuth Adam Dalgliesh. Began writing relatively late in life, her first published novel being "Cover Her Face" in 1962.

Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Educated at Cambridge Girls' High School.

[on writing mystery stories] I have a very strong response to what I feel is the spirit of a place. When I come upon the right setting I feel immediately 'This is where it happened'.

[If] detective fiction flourishes best in the most difficult of times, we may well be at the beginning of a golden age.

I think I'm very frightened of violence. I hate it. And it may be that by writing mysteries I am able, as it were, to exorcise this fear, which may very well be the same reason so many people enjoy reading a mystery.

When I first heard that Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall, I immediately wondered: Did he fall - or was he pushed? [on her interest in mysterious deaths developing in childhood]

That kind of crime writing was dull, in the sense that it was unrealistic, prettifying and romanticizing murder, but having little to do with real blood-and-guts tragedy. One simply cannot take these as realistic books about murder, about the horror of murder, the tragedy of murder, the harm that murder does.