Minette Walters

Minette Walters is a well-known crime writer whose first novel, The Ice House, won the Crime Writer's Award for the best novel in 1992. The daughter of an army officer, Minette spent the first ten years of her life moving between army bases in the north and south of England. She was sent to boarding school in Salisbury at the age of 12, and this had a great influence on the rest of her life, making her independent and ambitious. During a gap year between school and university, she worked in Israel on a kibbutz and in various institutions in Jerusalem. After this, she found the restrictive live-in college life at Durham University, where she studied French, rather oppressive and only really enjoyed her final year, when she lived in a flat in the house of an ex-miner and his wife. She worked as an editor on a romantic fiction magazine after graduation and before becoming a freelance writer. She married in 1978 and when her two sons were born shortly afterwards, she took a seven-year break for writing. During this time she not only brought her children up but, among other activities, helped her husband to renovate three houses, and she says that DIY is still her favorite way to relax! Since the publication of "The Ice House", she has written a book practically every year, and five of her early stories have been adapted for television. "Chickenfeed" was published in 2006. Minette Walters lives in Dorset, south-west England, with her husband Alec.