Writer steps out of crime underworld with TV success

Her routine rarely changed, but when a scriptwriter bought one of her books from the local Oxfam shop, the 56-year-old suddenly found herself in flashy offices on London’s South Bank discussing plans for TV adaptation. It all seemed a little unlikely, not least because Ann’s central character, the dowdy spinster Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope, has little of the usual gloss required for TV.

“It was like a fairytale,” she recalls. “A scriptwriter for ITV bought a second-hand copy of The Crow Trap, the second of the Vera books, and liked it. They were looking for a strong female lead for a detective show, so it wasn’t just chance. I had a meeting with ITV executives and remember pinching myself.”

Things moved pretty quickly. Brendan Blethyn was cast as DI Stanhope and Ann, who wrote many of the novels, when she lived in Huddersfield soon found herself coming face to face with the woman who for so long had only existed in her imagination.

“I had a very strong image of who Vera was in my head,” says Ann, who recently moved to Northumberland. “She was created almost as an antidote to central women characters in crime novels who are fit and manage to get a bloke.

“Vera is dowdy and overweight but still has her own character and is very smart. Some of the cop show formulas have become a bit tired, which is maybe where Vera is different, because she’s a real woman who’s middle-aged. Even Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect was really slim and sexy.”

In May, there will be four two-hour standalone episodes, adapted from her books Hidden Depths, The Crow Trap and Telling Tales, plus an original story. The hope is there will be more and Ann, whose latest thriller, Silent Voices, sees Stanhope investigating the murder of a woman found in a sauna, admits that Blethyn’s portrayal has influenced her subsequent books.

“Now, I hear her voice when I’m writing dialogue. She has that wit, humour and a touch of cruelty. I don’t see Brenda so much because my vision of Vera is uglier than Brenda, even dressed-down Brenda, but I do hear Brenda’s voice in my head.”

Cleeves, who for many years was the reader in residence at the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, knows her profile will be raised by the TV series and isn’t entirely sure how she will cope.

“I quite like the comfortable obscurity, so it’s going to be a bit of a shock to walk into bookshops and see displays of my books and big posters of Brenda and the TV tie-in covers.

“Although my husband Tim will be over the moon. He’s an ornithologist and adventurer at heart and there will be a bit more money for travel.”

The daughter of a schoolteacher, Cleeves grew up in the countryside, first in Herefordshire, then in north Devon. After dropping out of university she took a number of temporary jobs – women’s refuge leader, cook, auxiliary coastguard – before going back to college and training to be a probation officer. It was while she was cooking in the Bird Observatory on Fair Isle that she met Tim and the couple later moved to West Yorkshire with their two daughters.

It was there she began writing short stories in her spare time, but success was slow in coming.

First published in 1986, she enjoyed respectable if moderate sales until the publication of her 20th book in 2006.

Raven Black won the Crime Writers’ Association Duncan Lawrie Dagger award, netting Ann a £20,000 prize.

“I was an overnight success after 20 years,” she jokes. Now her books have been translated into 16 languages, are bestsellers in the UK, Scandinavia and Germany and sell widely in the US. She is clearly enjoying the new found interest in her work, but whatever happens to DI Stanhope on the small screen, Ann’s love affair with crime will continue.

“I started with Agatha Christie but quickly moved on to Dorothy Sayers, Sherlock Holmes and the Father Brown stories. More recently I discovered people were still writing those sorts of books – Ruth Rendell, Ian Rankin, PD James and John Harvey. If I’m feeling miserable or ill, I’ll go to a Dorothy Sayers or a PD James because there’s something reassuring about that resolution at the end.”

Silent Voices, published by Macmillan, priced £17.99 is available to order from the Yorkshire Post Bookshop on 0800 0153232 or online at www.yorkshirepostbookshop.co.uk