Amy Lovel tells us ten things about the author behind the books.
When She Was Bad
I’m interested in family outsiders
These are the people who live on the margins of their families, the ones “we don’t talk about” because they are not like others. Maybe they’ve never had a relationship or they don’t have a job. Perhaps they’ve been in prison or are somewhere on the spectrum like my heroine’s Uncle Henry. And yet they can still surprise us and break out of the roles they have been assigned for decades.
I love classic detective fiction
Not so much Agatha Christie, whose characters always seem subordinate to her convoluted plots but Margery Allingham, Dorothy Sayers, Ngaio Marsh and Edmund Campion. Confusingly, Allingham’s detective is also called Campion – Albert. Like Sayers’ Peter Wimsey, Albert Campion is an aristocrat, with a deceptively idiotic air. He has a manservant called Magersfontein Lugg – genius.
My heroine has my dream job
Léonie Woodbridge is the proprietor of a bookshop – in 1980. Before e-books, the loss of the Net Book Agreement and the rise of celebrities putting their names on novels and children’s books by unacknowledged ghostwriters. She loves her work but is distracted from it in my novel because of the need to solve a family mystery.
I know about three girl families
I was the youngest of three daughters just as Léonie is. And I am the mother of three daughters myself. I rather like the fact that the differences between them can’t be ascribed to gender, which I think can happen in mixed families.
My famous boyfriends
Two Rogers. The first was actor Roger Rees (Nicholas Nickleby, Lord John Marbury in The West Wing), who was my first boyfriend in our late teens. We attended the same church and youth club and even once acted together on the same stage. Neither of us realised at that time that he was gay. I was sad to hear he had died in 2015. The second was Roger Scruton, whom I dated briefly at university. Then, he looked like a cross between Mick Jagger and French film star Jean-Paul Belmondo and was an irresistible mix of exciting, kind and a bit dangerous. Now he is a High Tory who loves fox-hunting. It’s a warning about being attracted to partners who are ultimately unsuitable for whatever reason.
I have lived in both Clapham and Belsize Park
Where When she was Bad is mainly set. I could not afford to live in either place now! In one I was a schoolgirl and in the other companion to an old lady with a dog.
Early hero
When I was 12-13, I was madly in love with Elvis Presley and slept with a black and white photo of him under my pillow. I still find the young Elvis thrillingly handsome.
Death in families
This fascinates me. When a sibling dies the position of children in the family changes. When my older sister died, my middle sister became the older and I went from youngest to younger of two. It may seem a small thing but symbolic of the fact that all the cards have been thrown up in the air and landed in a different pattern. It is also often not talked about and it’s only when you get to know someone very well that you discover they have experienced death in the family and how it has affected them.
Cats
I was brought up with a mother cat in the house who had several litters of kittens a year. There are photos of me with armfuls of kittens like a bunch of flowers in my arms. I had my first cat of my own when I was five and have had them ever since. Currently three Burmese, one of whom has just broken my cafetière so is in the dog house or feline equivalent
No cycling for me
I never learned to ride a bike as a child. I have problems with balance, don’t like being at the top of long escalators or buildings, so I think I could never master a bike. I have toyed with the idea of an adult tricycle but that has been ridiculed by my daughters. I feel a bit wistful about the freedom and exercise I have missed out on.