Motives that drive a life of crime

Crime novelist Minette Walters explains she is more interested in the forces that drive evil than in simple whodunnits, writes Catherine Foley

She wears a rakishly-slanted fedora for the photographer. The shot will be moody and mysterious, making her the very model of the darkling crime novelist. The image, however, dissipates like mist on an eerie moor when the hat is removed, and Minette Walters reveals herself to be a curly-haired blonde with a ready smile and twinkling eyes.

"I'm not dark or solitary," she says. " I have no problem with my own company. You have to enjoy the company of the people you are inventing. I think I'm a very outgoing, extrovert type of person. I'm the opposite of some of the people in my book, but quite like other characters. I'm not the intense, dour person that a lot of people expect. I think all crime writers are always amused by people's expectations. I think the romantic writers tend to be more depressed and dark. But it's the dark side that interests us."

The dark side is much in evidence in her latest novel, Fox Evil, her ninth and the successor to books such as The Scold's Bridle, which won the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award in 1994, its follow-up The Dark Room, which was shortlisted the following year, and Acid Row which reached the shortlist this year.

"All my books deal with the damage that can be done," she says. "That sounds as if I'm trying to set myself up as a paragon. My sons tell me I'm a terrible mother. I told them how to use the washing machine when they were 10."

Witnessing damage first hand has been part of Walters's life for the past 15 years, time she has spent as prison visitor. She insists, though, her visits are borne out of a belief in the redemptive power of the penal reform system rather than a prurient desire to study individuals she may want to write about.

"The building block of society is the family," says Walters. "If the family doesn't work, I think the knock-on effect is huge. I have yet to meet someone in prison who doesn't come from a dysfunctional background, because people who come from supportive families don't tend to end up in prison. The people who are set adrift at an early age go off the rails."

She, however, is far from adrift, rooted in the family farm, an 18th-century manor house managed by her husband, Alec Walters, who has travelled with her to Dublin for the day. Both her mother and her mother-in-law live with them on the farm and the couple's two adult sons are also regular visitors.

It is with reluctance that she leaves Dorchester to promote a book. "When you sit down and write your first book all you're interested in is making that book work. It's really difficult going from being an author to having to sell yourself," she explains.

The chief difficulty is the schedule she has to adhere to. Walters has 36 publishers around the world all wanting her to travel to promote her latest book. Touring, she adds, "means being away from my family . . . it's very hard, very tiring. It's funny, I don't think Agatha Christie ever had to tour. I'm constantly being asked to go on cruise liners. I'm much too fond of my family and home to go off on a cruise for two weeks."

Christie was a starting off point for Walters, part of the reason she does what she does. "I grew up on crime novels Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Ngaio Marsh and Margorie Allingham. They were my favourite novels, full-stop."

"The one thing that was lacking from that age of crime writing was the reality of crime, the realism, it was more of a parlour game . . . I want motivation. To do that you have to go inside the head of your characters. What causes people to murder is what fascinates me. It makes for much more believable characters. I used to get a little bit annoyed that the murderer used to turn out to be mad in Agatha Christie's."

Her latest book is set in the the country, and running alongside the story's action is the fox-hunting debate. Basing her novels around current events is a favourite device. "What I like to do is see what's happening and then something grabs you and you say this would make a good setting," she explains. "The metaphor throughout the story is fox-hunting. James (husband of the book's victim) is effectively the fox, he is being isolated."

As a one-time journalist and former editor of a romantic fiction magazine, she now revels in the creation of crime novels: "because you can explore extremes of emotion. When you have premature, violent death, not just of people but animals, you are looking at extreme emotions. I don't believe in the force of evil. You only have you to look at a row of babies," she explains. "I think circumstances can make people perform evil acts."

The protagonist in Fox Evil is "a very unpleasant person", she continues, but "you look at his history, and wonder how does anyone grow up normally.

"I think we are all capable to degrees of doing evil things. I can't think there's a mother in the world wishing she hadn't said what she said to her children. You take that a little bit further when the inhibitors are not there for whatever reason and the individual loses control." Her favourite character in Fox Evil is a little boy, Wolfie. "He's a really brave child. He knows he has to survive. I'm saying this is damage of an extreme variety. It's one of the questions: Will Wolfie survive or will he be damaged? His courage is extreme. I'm balancing what Wolfie is going through with what Fox Evil himself went through."

Fox Evil is published by Macmillan, price £12.99