Madam, - As a journalist working on the Sunday Independent, I was not surprised to get a sniffy review for my first novel, The Dead (co-written under the name Ingrid Black) from a certain "Michael Painter" (Books, August 9th).
What did alarm me, however, was your reviewer's evident belief that the book's heroine was in fact a man. I would have thought the use of words such as "she" and "her" throughout the book was a bit of a giveaway.
How would my fellow crimewriter Vincent Banville like it if I carried out a similar sex-change operation on Michael Painter, a character from one of his early novels? Or, indeed, if I referred to you, Madam, as Sir? - Yours etc.,
EILIS O'HANLON,
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Belfast 15.