Minette Walters

Walters's themes include isolation, family dysfunction, rejection, marginalisation, justice and revenge. Her novels are often set against real backgrounds and real events to draw her readers into the 'reality' of what she is writing about. With no series character tying her to particular people, places or times, she moves freely around settings – a sink estate (Acid Row), a Dorset village (Fox Evil), a suburb of London (The Shape of Snakes) – although every setting is 'claustrophobic' to encourage the characters 'to turn on each other'.

On 3–7 March 2008, BBC2 aired Murder Most Famous, a five-part TV talent contest series, in which Walters tutors and judges six competing celebrity writers, with the winner having his or her crime fiction novel published by Pan Macmillan on World Book Day 2009. The series was won by the actress Sherrie Hewson, whose debut novel The Tannery was published in March 2009.

In September 2007, Walters released her fourteenth book, The Chameleon's Shadow, in the UK.

In addition to full-length novels, Walters has written feature articles for magazines and the broadsheets, some short stories including "English Autumn, American Fall", and two novellas, The Tinder Box (1999), and Chickenfeed (2006). The latter was published for World Book Day 2006 as part of the 'Quick Reads' initiative. Minette has written another entry in the Quick Reads series entitled A Dreadful Murder for World Book Day 2013. The novella is based on the 1908 murder of Caroline Luard.

Her first full-length novel, The Ice House, was published in 1992. It took two and a half years to write and was rejected by numerous publishing houses until Maria Rejt, Macmillan Publishers, bought it for £1250. Within four months, it had won the Crime Writers' Association John Creasey award for best first novel and had been snapped up by 11 foreign publishers. Walters was the first crime/thriller writer to win three major prizes with her first three books. Walters's second novel, The Sculptress, which was inspired in part by an encounter Walters had as a volunteer prison visitor, won the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award. Walters's third novel, The Scold's Bridle, then won the CWA Gold Dagger, giving her a unique treble.

Walters joined IPC Magazines as a sub-editor in 1972 and became an editor of Woman's Weekly Library the following year. She supplemented her salary by writing romantic novelettes, short stories, and serials in her spare time. The romantic novelettes were written in approximately two weeks and published under a pseudonym that remains a secret. Walters turned freelance in 1977 but continued to write for magazines to cover her bills.

During a gap year between school and Durham University, 1968, Walters volunteered in Israel with The Bridge in Britain, working on a kibbutz and in a delinquent boys' home in Jerusalem. She graduated from Trevelyan College, Durham in 1971 with a BA in French. Minette met her husband Alec Walters while she was at Durham and they married in 1978. They have two sons, Roland and Philip.

Minette Walters (born 26 September 1949) is an English crime writer.