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Martin Did you always intend to be a writer of crime fiction, or did you become involved with the genre by chance?
Margaret Pure chance. I’d written three unpublished novels (two technothrillers and one supernatural suspense), when I started on Goodnight, My Angel. My agent phoned me to find out what I was working on and I explained the plot – Kate Pearson is trying hard to recover from the murder of her daughter. Then Kate starts getting messages from over the internet from her dead daughter. ‘Ooh,’ my agent said, ‘Sounds like crime.’ She can be very persuasive, so I thought I’d give it a go. Of course, she was right. My fascination with psychology was perfectly suited to the genre.

Martin How easy, or difficult, was it to get your first book published?
Margaret As I said – three unpublished. Five years of trying. If it weren’t for the encouragement of my agent and the few kind words of editors who advised me to keep going, despite turning me down, I’d’ve thrown in the towel and concentrated on my teaching career.

Martin When starting a new book, do you begin with an idea for a character, a motive, a setting – or something else?
Margaret It varies. Sometimes it’s the murder – the scene pops into my head, in full Technicolor, and I have to find out who the victim is, why s/he was murdered, by whom, and what the motive is. Sometimes it’s an idea – the what if? Factor. In Darkness Falls you have a female barrister, Clara Pascal, dragged off the streets and kept in a cold dark cellar. She’s denied the one thing that could probably save her: the power of speech, because her abductor refuses to communicate with her and won’t allow her to speak. In the sequel, Weaving Shadows, the what if factor came from the notion of an ex- prisoner – a murderer – paying a visit to his ex-tutor. I had to know what happened next, and it took me four hundred pages to find the answer.

Martin Do you discuss the writing of a book with your family, agent or publisher before you complete it? Or do you fear that talking about the story will interrupt the creative process?
Margaret Since moving to Hodder & Stoughton with Darkness Falls, I’ve found that both my editor and my agent take a keener interest in what I’m working on, so I discuss the novels with them at the synopsis stage, but then I go away and write it without any interference. The only person who hears my work in progress is my husband. I read it chapter by chapter to him and he comments. It’s a very useful way to discover clunky sentences and polish dialogue.

Martin How important is research to you, and how do you go about research? Margaret It’s crucial to my novels. The earlier books had hardly any police procedure and this was simply because I found it so difficult to make contact with police and to find out how procedure worked. For Darkness Falls and Weaving Shadows I attended Crown Court proceedings in both Chester and Liverpool, visited a HOLMES room, did a police forensic training course and had a tour around a mortuary, among other things.

Martin A couple of books ago, you changed publishers. Has that worked well? Margaret Everyone, from the editorial to publicity and marketing staff at Hodder and Stoughton has put a huge amount of energy and enthusiasm into promoting my work Their belief in me has been inspiring – it’s given me the confidence to explore new areas of crime fiction.

Martin Your latest book, Weaving Shadows, is the first to feature a character who has appeared in your earlier work. What prompted this change of tack and do you plan a long series about Clara Pascal?
Margaret Never say never, as for the change of tack, I had the idea for Weaving Shadows an ex-prisoner turning up on His former tutor's doorstep - but no strong central character. The judicial system, Clara's previous trauma and her sense of responsibility for her past mistakes made her the perfect foil.'

Martin Chester, one of my favourite cities, has hardly ever featured in detective fiction previously. What prompted you to use it as a backdrop?
Margaret Atmosphere. It has all those lovely dark corners, the shadowy galleries of the Rows – perfect for the stalker to observe without being observed. Extreme wealth rubs shoulders with bitter deprivation. It has all the contrasts a crime novelist could possibly want.

Martin Clara is a barrister. How did you set about thinking yourself into the mind of a heroine who is a member of the legal profession?
Margaret By shadowing a barrister – legitimately, I hasten to add – but from the initial reactions of many chambers, you would think I was a creepy stalker, trying to wheedle my way in to their lawyers’ lives. In the end I got my then editor to write a letter of commendation and stuffed a few of my paperbacks into a jiffy bag and left it at the chambers which seemed least hostile to my enquiries. The response was terrific: the barrister in question allowed me to follow her around for several days, attending family, civil and criminal court proceedings. She’s a great raconteur and gave me a wealth of background material, too. I also attended Chester and Liverpool Crown Courts, sitting in on everything from PDHs (see p.8, Darkness Falls) to a very high profile murder case.

Martin Three years ago you founded ‘Murder Squad’. What prompted this, and has the existence of the Squad helped your career?
Margaret The concept of Murder Squad was born when I first realised that good reviews do not necessarily get you good sales. At my previous publisher I had no marketing or sales budget, but collaborating with six other high calibre writers brought the cost of producing promotional material down to affordable levels. Three years later, I find that most library events and festival organisers know about Murder Squad, and we are frequently recommended by reader development officers from one county to another. As for Murder Squad helping my career – since I changed publishers to Hodder and Stoughton, my editor has told me that she had always enjoyed and admired my work and she wanted me in their stable, but she has also mentioned the good contacts I have in the trade and general press as well as festival organisers. In the spring issue of The Author, Joanna Prior, Penguin’s Director of Marketing and Publicity, describes a ‘promotable’ author as someone who ‘will work as hard to sell his book as he did to write it’. In the first six months of 2003, I’ve averaged five events per month, ranging from press and radio interviews to readers’ days and writers’ workshops from Glasgow to West Sussex – I work hard to sell my books I went to a business seminar recently and apparently PR agencies measure their success by the number of column inches they generate in newspapers. Murder Squad has had coverage in trade press, local and national radio and TV, regional newspapers and national (and even transatlantic) magazines. Maths isn’t my strong subject, but that lot must add up to something . . .

Martin What do you see as the future for ‘Murder Squad’?
Margaret I’ve made a note of this as the first item on the agenda for the next Murder Squad meeting!

Martin How do you see your own future as a crime writer developing?
Margaret I’m always striving for those two things which encapsulate the paradox of good writing: greater complexity and greater simplicity. Complexity of character, theme, plot, together with simplicity of language. Where that will take me, I can’t be sure. I would like to get onto the bestseller lists (wouldn’t we all?), make the breakthrough in America, become a household name – I know, big dreams, high ambitions. What can I say? I’m a writer – I make my living by dreaming.

Martin What crime novels (other than by members of Murder Squad!) do you enjoy?
Margaret Those by Thomas Harris, Dennis Lehane, Elmore Leonard, Ruth Rendell – and Stephen King.

Martin And what are your favourite two crime novels, one a classic, and one from recent years?
Margaret I’d say P D James’s An Unsuitable Job for a Woman because, published in 1972, it must be one of the first novels to feature a female PI, but I’m not sure if it counts as a classic. On the other hand, I know Ross MacDonald’s The Chill is a classic, because it was recently re-released in Vintage’s ‘Crime Classics’ imprint. I love the use of psychology in this novel Until recently, I knew MacDonald’s work only through the Paul Newman films featuring Lew Archer; finding the book was a thrill, and it lived up to all my expectations. My modern choice would have to be The Silence of the Lambs. It’s difficult now to remember just how exciting this novel was when it first appeared. It was truly ground-breaking, brilliantly researched and – a crucial factor – the research informed the characters, plot and setting without overwhelming them. Harris created a tremendously empathic character in Clarice: a strong, intelligent woman whose vulnerability the reader could identify with, and in Lecter, he realised a criminal genius who simultaneously fascinated and repelled. Not since reading Highsmith’s Ripley for the first time have I felt such a queasy ambivalence: I felt drawn to Lecter, and yet I was in no doubt that he was a sadistic monster.

Books by Margaret Murphy

Goodnight My Angel
The Desire of the Moth
Caging the Tiger
Past Reason
Dying Embers
Weaving Shadows