timetobeinearnest
to my grandchildren that what I had wanted to be was a novelist.
Even to think of speaking these words was a realization of potential
failure.
Ican’tnowrememberhowlongittooktowrite Cover Her Face,butI
suspectitwasyearsratherthanmonths.WhenIbeganthebookIwas
working at Paddington Hospital Management Committee, and the
book was largely planned on the Central Line as I travelled from
Redbridge to Liverpool Street, then on by the Metropolitan Line to
Paddington. The writing, always by hand, was done in the early
morningswhenIwouldgetupintimetospendaboutanhourwriting
before I needed to leave for work, occasionally at weekends between
visits to Connor in hospital, and sometimes on the journey. The work
was hindered by family emergencies, by pressure of my job and by
the need to spend some evenings at the City of London College in
Moorgate, studying for the qualification in hospital administration
whichIhopedmighteventuallyresultinajobsufficientlywellpaidto
support my family. I don’t think it occurred to me then that writing
novels would be either lucrative enough or dependable enough to
relyon.
It didn’t occur to me either to begin with anything other than a
detective story. They had formed my own recreational reading in
adolescence andI was influenced in particularby the womenwriters:
Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh and Josephine
Tey. I had no wish to write a strongly autobiographical novel about
the war or Connor’s illness. I suppose, too, I have a streak of
scepticism, even of morbidity, which attracted me to the exploration
of character and motive under the trauma of a police investigation of
a violent death. I could always imagine myself writing a novel which
wasn’t a detective story – indeed, I have written two, Innocent Blood
and The Children of Men – but I can’t imagine myself writing a book
which doesn’t include death. Death has always fascinated me and
eveninchildhoodIwasalwaysawareofthefragilityoflife.
And there were other reasons for my choice. I love structure in a
novel and the detective story is probably the most structured of
popular fiction. Some would say that it is the most artificial, but then
all fiction is artificial, a careful rearrangement by selection of the
writer’s internal life in a form designed to make it accessible and
attractive to a reader. The construction of a detective story might be
formulaic;thewritingneednotbe.AndIwassettingout,Iremember,
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