Author Biography | Interview | Books by this Author | Readalikes
Clare Mackintosh spent twelve years on the police force in England and has written for The Guardian, Good Housekeeping, and other publications. A columnist for Cotswold Life and Writing Magazine, she is the founder of Chipping Norton Literary Festival and lives in the Cotswolds with her family.
Clare Mackintosh's website
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Your background is interestingyou went from police detective
to journalist to novelist. What inspired your career transitions and
how do you think the three relate?
I spent 12 years in the police and loved every minute of it, but it
became increasingly hard to balance a busy career with life as a
mother of three young children. I took a career break and reinvented
myself as a freelance feature writer, and at the same time I wrote
I Let You Go. I signed a two-book publishing deal the month before
I was due back at work, so I handed in my notice and never went
back.
The thread that links all three types of work is storytelling: as
a detective I told victim's stories on their behalf; collected witnesses' stories to support allegations of
crime. My job was to pull together all the threads of a story and present it to a court in such a way that
they could decide on a verdict. In that way it wasn't dissimilar to the stories I now present to readers.
Given your experience in the police force, do you find it necessary to do additional research before
writing? If so, what kind of research do you do?
I didn't need to do much research for I Let You Go, although I did check some procedure with a ...
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