Interview

Claire Mackintosh discusses the similarities between her careers as a police officer and a writer of two bestsellers - I Let You Go and I See You

Your background is interesting—you 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 ...