Anne Perry - Dark Assassin

So Americans don't have a problem then with making the leap to understanding that? But then, you're writing about history and you write about it well. You write about it with authenticity.

Well, thank you. I try. Besides, on the east coast they also have exactly the same class system. It's the same thing.

It seems to me that you're at an interesting point in your career. Popularity-wise. Your following has really grown in the last few years. Do you get a sense of that?

Yes: according to the figures it goes up a little bit each year. It's been absolutely steady, there's no just gently all the time. But it's also gone up quite remarkably in France and in Spain. Does nicely in Italy, in Portuguese and Japanese. And they're on audio tape and The Cater Street Hangman has just been filmed for television. And it will be shown by A & E in early December. It's a pilot and I don't know whether they're going to do any more or not. We're swinging in the breeze waiting to find out.

Filmed in North America or in the UK?

In the UK. Done by Yorkshire Television. Now, watch when I name drop, I do it well: it's actually Prince Edward's company that's done it. And he does actually work at it. He was there on set. He actually is a very nice chap. And he has a nice sense of humor, too. He was on the Des O'Connor show – which is a sort of chat show – just before the program aired in the UK and he really was funny. He had them rolling around. And it's all spontaneous. None of it was thought up before.

What's the title of the show?

It's called The Inspector Pitt Mysteries .

Did you see it?

What do you think? [Laughing?]

Did you like it?

Yes. I liked it very much. I was very lucky. I waited quite a while and worked with people I believed would not have much of a chance of getting it done, but if they did would make a really good job of it. And they did get the chance to get it done, and I think they made a superb job of it. It's very, very true to my characters. The stories altered a little bit. Condensed, of course because it's a different medium. But the characters are exactly as I wrote them and quite a lot of the dialog is straight from the book. But the casting director picked them right out of my mind. I'm very, very fortunate.

Tell me what your genre is.

Well, if you've got to stick it in a genre… mystery is so wide. You can put it in: a mystery novel. Historical mystery novel. But I don't think I invented them: I think Sir Arthur Conan Doyle got there a day or two before me.

I don't like putting things into descriptions, but I suppose you have to.

There's also always something mysterious going on in your novels .

There's always a crime and it always gets solved. I think of the end and then I think, 'Well, how did this happen?' and then you write it that way. You start at the end, and then go back and write and go that way. Not everyone does, but I do. Some people just sit down at the page and start off. I start from what happened, including the why. And I don't like, 'He was mad' as an answer. Unless he's been driven mad by something we can understand. And I've had one or two of those: it's something that we can understand that put him in that position.

You're a very strong writer. I think anything you wrote would be interesting .

Thank you. I'll take your tape. And play it back to myself when I'm feeling low.

Do you think there's a chance you might write outside of this genre ?

Yes. I've got a fantasy coming out in Britain on the 4th of February. It doesn't exactly fit in that genre, there's just no better way to describe it. An allegory. A spiritual journey in story form.

What's it called?

Tathea . It's the character. If it will come out in North America I don't know. I haven't got an answer from the publisher yet. It's not my usual publisher, it's a church publisher. I'm Mormon. And it's with the publishers there. I've got a verbal "Yes, we like it," but you don't know until you're there. When I've got someone's name on the contract, then I'll know where I am.

So, is it fantasy like Anne McCaffrey kind of fantasy?

No. Not at all like that. It doesn't really fit into anybody's sort of category. No dragons, no magic. No wizards. No sorcery. It's a spiritual journey back to the original question: who am I. It's the basic question that some of us ask at some time or another.

Was it fun to write?

If I tell you I had a wonderful Christmas… everybody I employ was away for a whole fortnight and I worked over 600-odd pages and did a complete re-write and I wrote every day except Sunday, even Christmas day I wrote for a while. It was one of the best Christmases I've had. Fun it was not. It was totally satisfying and absorbing and I was very happy.

Joyous?

Yes! That's a better word. I was totally absorbed in it. And I was happy to work every day from the time I woke until the time I went to sleep. I got right through the whole thing in two weeks. I did a complete rewrite of 650 pages in two weeks.

Is writing fun for you?

Oh yes it is. I love it. You couldn't pay me not to write.

So you enjoy the process as much as anything.

Yes. Almost everything about it is enjoyable for me. About the only thing I don't like is when the editor calls you from two books back and you've forgotten what it's about. And she says, 'On page 372 about half way down, did you mean this or did you mean that?' And you can't remember the story. And you've got to scratch through the manuscript and try and apply yourself and think, 'Well, what did I mean?' I don't think anybody likes line corrections.

You write 19th century London so well, would you like to have lived there and then?

No. Do you know anything about the medicine then? The plumbing? The dentistry? The clothes? The central heating and lack thereof? The dreadful restrictions on women? But just the medicine itself would be enough to put me off permanently.

You do write it so compellingly. I was reading a bit in Breach of Promise dealing with Gabriel's description of his war experience in India. And it's so real: you have to have done a lot of research to have captured the feeling so accurately.

I read quite a few diaries of the period. It was pretty appalling.

The detail was so fine. Readers could get the feeling that you dreamed yourself there.

Oh absolutely. I am there.

And you get to come back.

Exactly. I get to do it in the comfort of my own home. With a flush bathroom and a hot bath when I want one and if I need to go to the dentist I can have a nice shot to deaden the pain and if I get a problem I can go to the doctor and get sorted relatively painlessly. Relative to that, anyway. | November 1998

Linda L. Richardsis the editor of January Magazine. Her fourth novel, Death was the Other Woman , will be published early in 2008 by St. Martin's Minotaur.