SOURCE: "Interview with Anne Perry," in Clues, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 52-65.

[In the following interview, Perry discusses her writing style, her major characters, and the reason she places her detective fiction in the Victorian Era.]

[Cooper Clark:] You first published The Cater Street Hangman in 1979. As a novelist who is relatively new to the world of detective fiction, what kinds of problems have you encountered? In getting acknowledged? Having your books available? With sales? Advertising?

In America I have had few problems, although I don't know about advertising of course, not having been there. In Britain unfortunately I have had almost every problem—neither advertising nor reviews, except one in a local paper. I took my book to the paper myself because I happened to know the journalist. But other than that, nothing in Britain. I have been very fortunate with reviews in America which my publisher has sent me, and I have received letters from readers.

In the last three years you've published four detective novels and you have written two more. In addition, you've written two non-mystery novels. How do you account for this prolific output? Are you bursting with things to say?

Yes, I am. I love to work morning, afternoon and evening. I love to describe things, I love history, I love to try and take a reader into the world that I see: to feel it, taste it, smell it, hear it, to feel as the people concerned feel. There's an old proverb that I believe comes from this part of the world: if you could only walk a mile in the other man's moccasins you'd know how he felt. I suppose this is what I'm trying to say. Historically, everybody has something in common with us today. There's an old French proverb, with which I don't entirely agree, which says that "to understand all is to forgive all." I wouldn't go so far as to say we should forgive all, but to understand all is perhaps at least to love if not to forgive, which is not necessarily the same thing. The essence of my writing is the exploration of the nature of self-mastery, courage and compassion.

Your books reflect this. They remind me of Thoreau's admonition to "Be a Columbus of the mind."

I think that's wonderful. I'd love to be a Columbus of the mind and a Marco Polo and a Magellan.

In what sense?

To be somewhere that I have not been before. I would also like to shed new light on the old possibilities. How is that for a compromise?

Why did you choose to write Victorian mysteries? What is it about the period that attracts you? Was it perhaps the dichotomy and schizophrenia of Victorian society—the woman as whore or Madonna, the very rich and the very poor, the moral rectitude and moral decadence, the violence and obscenity lying under the mannered surface, or as you say in your novel Paragon Walk the nasty little secrets that snap through the civilized veneer?

Exactly. I couldn't have put it as well myself. It is all of that and I also love the civilized violence of some of their conversation, I love their insults, and I like the sense of wit that's wrapped so neatly but is so barbed. I like the sense of period dress as well; it's wonderfully elegant on the exterior. These dramatic contrasts are most interesting.

You can see that cultural dichotomy even in their dress. The well-dressed Victorian woman went out of her house with ten to thirty pounds of clothing on, yet she maintained the illusion of fragility and delicacy.

It's the contrast between illusion and reality which is very satisfying for a mystery writer because after all the essence of mystery is that you should uncover a little at a time and that things should not be obvious. Therefore, I think that the Victorian period is ideal for a mystery writer because so many things are not what they seem.

Yes. In your novel Resurrection Row Aunt Vespasia says that "society is all to do with what seems, and nothing to do with what is." Is that what you're talking about through the character of Aunt Vespasia?

Yes, to a certain extent. She goes a bit further than I would, but a great deal of society is what seems rather than what is. The Victorians had a marvellous ability not to see what they didn't wish to see. They carried it to an even greater art than we have today. Of course, they had to. If they were to look at what was really there, it would have been unbearable, wouldn't it? But I think we today still have a great ability not to see what we don't wish to see.

I agree with that. On the subject of historical mysteries, Peter Lovesey has written: "And how productive the nineteenth century was of motives for murder. The need to achieve security by inheritance, or life insurance, or marriage; the risk of losing it when scandal threatened; the equating of sex with sin; the stigma of insanity; the things that went unsaid. Our world of social welfare and easier divorce and psychiatric care has removed many of the bad old reasons for murder. How uninspiring, too, by contrast with times past, are the modern weapons—the gun with telescopic sights, the car bomb and hypodermic syringe. Give me Jack the Ripper's knife or Neill Cream's bag of poisons or Lizzie Borden's axe."

He's said it all there. I think in a good mystery story the reader should identify with the criminal and feel that in those circumstances. "I might well have felt compelled to do the same thing if I was frightened enough and cornered. It's not outside understanding that a person should do this." I don't like motives of just pure greed or just pure malice unless there is a very strong reason. I like to feel that the reader would identify with the criminal, with all the people involved, and with the detective. I always feel that insanity or just pure basic greed are cop-outs. I don't exactly want the reader to feel "there but for the grace of God go I," but at least the reader should understand why it was that this person felt this way. I agree with Peter Lovesey. There were so many more motives in Victorian society. They were far more restricted. Other alternatives were not there.

Do you think that everybody's capable of murder, given the right circumstances?

I should think most people are, yes, if they are frightened enough and they have to act quickly enough either in defence of themselves or in defence of somebody else they care for deeply and the means are at hand. I don't know about absolutely everybody but a great many people. But whether it would be classed as murder or self-defence or whatever, I'm not sure. May we say capable of killing rather than capable of murder?

That's perhaps a better distinction.

Murder presupposes a certain guilt whereas killing can be justifiable homicide. I would think most women were capable of killing to defend a child, probably most men to defend their children or their wives or their homes, especially if they didn't have time to think, to find another way out. Time is a strong element.

Would you be capable of killing?

I don't know. I would think probably, if I felt that it was the only answer. Almost certainly, yes, if I was defending somebody else.

I'm thinking here of your character Dominic, because one of the points that you make in two books is that he doesn't have the passion or imagination to kill. Do you think that somebody with, let's say extreme sensibility and intense emotion within themselves, would be more capable of killing?

Yes, but Dominic might kill if he was cornered and it was a matter of self-defence, but he'd have to be driven very hard.

To change the subject, is your "sleuth," Charlotte, the new emerging woman that Thomas Hardy speaks about in his novels? She's a woman who dares to defy convention by marrying a policeman, Thomas Pitt, a man who is socially beneath her.

Charlotte is just me. If she wants something badly enough she'd do it and think afterwards; she'll do it and pay the price, thinking later, "good heavens, what have I done, what has it cost me." But it's an emotional thing, it's not sitting down and thinking, "should I do this or shall I do that?"

So Charlotte isn't really a feminist?

Not consciously but probably subconsciously. You see, I have never been consciously a feminist unless I see a particular case of injustice. I've always been brought up in a family where I have been treated as an equal with my brother so I've never had to fight for intellectual and social equality. Therefore the idea of having to fight for women's rights has only come to me relatively recently. The character of Charlotte is not written with the brain; she's written with the emotions and the guts. She is a lot of me.

In The Cater Street Hangman Charlotte is not a "sleuth." But in your subsequent novels she is. How do you account for this change?

It probably never occurred to her that it was possible for her to do it. She really didn't have much of an opportunity until the murder happened in her own immediate area and then, of course, when she married the policeman she discovered that meddling was rather fun.

Peter Lovesey and Jean Stubbs have suggested that the vicarious need for excitement in very dull lives was important in the Victorian upper class.

Oh yes, I think so. Everything that I have read would indicate that that was very strongly so and a lot of their excesses sprang from boredom. Imagine if there was nothing that you needed to do how quickly you would get bored. If you go on holiday, the first day of doing nothing is marvellous, the second day is less marvellous and by the third day it's driving you crazy. If you have life where you are unnecessary really, it breeds not only boredom but a lack of self-worth.

That's important to Charlotte.

Yes it is. It's important to everybody even if they don't realize it. Many of the people who indulged in some of the peculiar Victorian vices and the general wasting of time—gambling, crazy carriage races, wild flirtations and affairs and what have you—behaved this way because it sprang from boredom. Sometimes this behavior springs from a need to convince yourself that you're alive, that you have a purpose, and that you have an identity.

You're right that everyone needs self-worth but the definition of worth for the beautiful ladylike Victorian woman was that she was useless. It was a way of defining yourself as beautiful—the privilege of not having to work. Uselessness was aesthetic.

Yes, that's true. But if society says that, does it necessarily make for happiness?

That's a good point because Charlotte certainly doesn't accept society's definition of her role in life.

And her sister, Emily, increasingly is finding the static upper class life less satisfying; she enjoys a jolly good meddle as well.

Usually detectives are male and either celibate or with a wife firmly in the background. But Charlotte Pitt is not only highly visible and incorporated into the story, she also becomes involved in the detective work. This is unusual in the Victorian mystery story. Of course she is married to a policeman, and she and her sister Emily can infiltrate the world of "Society"; they can hear things Thomas would not. When you were thinking of the character of Charlotte, is this one of the ways in which you thought you could ease her into her role as sleuth?

I started by wanting to show both upstairs and downstairs in a Victorian household and thereby get both sides of the story. I used Charlotte and her husband, Thomas Pitt, to do this. I'm not sure honestly which idea came first, it sort of happened. This was one way to explore the dichotomy you were referring to earlier. One person wouldn't see both sides behaving naturally. If Charlotte had gone downstairs to the kitchen, the servants would have immediately altered their behavior and if Pitt had gone upstairs into the drawing-room the upper class likewise would have altered their behavior. So in order to see both worlds naturally, I had to have two people from different classes.

I'd like to get back to the subject of women. Women were extremely limited in the Victorian period. Charlotte's father would not allow her to read the newspaper because as the narrator writes in Callander Square, newspapers carry "little else but crime and scandal, and such political notions as were undesirable for the consideration of women, as well, of course, as intellectually beyond them." In addition, men did not like a tongue as frank and undisciplined as Charlotte's.

It's still not so popular for a woman to have intellectual opinions and be quite as frank as Charlotte. I hadn't realized this focus until you asked the question but probably it's a good deal of my own feeling coming through because I've found myself a little less than popular on occasion for being articulate, having opinions and perhaps being less reticent than I might have been about expressing them.

To continue with that, throughout your novels we see that Charlotte has political convictions with regard to Reform Bills in Parliament such as the Poor Laws. Why hasn't her interest (given that she is a woman who is more than aware of the unequal position of women in her society) focused on Women's Property Rights, the Divorce Laws and women's suffrage? Dependence in the Victorian period was a part not only of woman's supposed nature, but also it was incorporated into English law. I wonder why Charlotte has so much compassion and sympathy for the poor when she herself is in a position that is inferior by law and by society.

Give me time, I'll get around to it (laughs). I think it's a very good idea. It's possibly a jolly good motive for another crime. I feel I ought to deal with one thing at a time or it's going to become too confused. But you've given me a good idea, I'll get around to that. We've had quite a number of women suffrage programs on television and I just didn't want to get on the bandwagon. Also women's property rights are now fairly well settled and some of the other things that I've dealt with, in some cases, are still open wounds. You'll have noticed that I've covered child pornography quite a bit; well, you know that's currently on the rise. That is a valid thing to be concerned about because a significant number of children are still abused. Quite a lot of the things I've covered are current whereas women's suffrage is not. We do have the vote and for goodness sake we've got a lady Prime Minister (laughs). We haven't got anything like equal representation in Parliament but there's nothing the law can do about that.

You have a proportionately high number of female murderers in your books. In five novels, you have three female murderers. Why?

Because women were so limited, as we've said before, in their dealing with things. The law didn't give them an opportunity to get out of their difficult situations and when you are as restricted as that you have to take matters into your own hands if you're going to solve the problem to your liking. The more restricted you are by outside circumstances the more inventive and perhaps the more violent you tend to be within those limits. Perhaps it is also because I am a woman that I can think of situations in which a woman might do those things, not that I'm suggesting that it's acceptable or excusable. Possibly the women's motives were stronger because Victorian men had so many other ways out of their particular problems.

Your ratio of female murderers is statistically high but then literature is not sociology.

Also the idea happened to occur to me. When I start to write, the first thing that comes to me before anything else is motive. Now what is a strong motive for a crime? Then I build upon the motives that have occurred to me and it just seems to have been the ones that have been the most appropriate for women.

You said before that Charlotte is yourself, a kind of alter-ego.

A part of me anyway.

I'd like you to clarify those parts and also what about Thomas Pitt? He seems to be a part of you, although perhaps in a lesser way.

Charlotte is physically quite a lot like me or at least when I was her age. I think probably her speech patterns, her thoughts, her instinctive ideas, and much of her behavior is me. But she doesn't have my darker side. I'm more of a fighter than Charlotte. I don't think there is a character that's really as close to me in the detective stories as there is in my historical ones. In my historical novels there are people who are more like me. Also Charlotte has no particular religious conviction, therefore, that whole side of my life which is possibly the most predominant side, is not there. I would like to be as compassionate as Thomas Pitt is, and I would like to have Aunt Vespasia's sense of humor.

Is Charlotte in any way a fantasy for you? Other writers have admitted that their main characters were. The reader is told several times in several novels that Charlotte is Pitt's haven.

Not really. I think if I were going to identify in that sense with either one of them it would be Pitt. Charlotte is far more domestic than I am. I would love to wear the clothes of that period, but that's about as far as the fantasy goes. If I wanted the life of any one of those people it would be Aunt Vespasia's. She has tremendous courage, she's outrageous, she's a fighter, she's compassionate, she's at the top of her tree socially, and there's a streak of ruthlessness in Aunt Vespasia—ruthlessness and courage in fighting for what she wants but yet with great compassion. I don't admire ruthlessness in itself but I admire courage and single-mindedness. If you have power, you have the responsibility to use it well. Power is opportunity; it's opportunity to do well or do badly. If you make a mess of it the penalty is very dreadful but if you do it well what you can achieve is enormous. One of the things that I admire in Aunt Vespasia is that she feels responsible; she has the best qualities of her class, of knowing that every privilege carries a very great responsibility.

She's involved in the Poor Laws.

Yes, she has power, therefore, she knows that she must be responsible for change, for improving things, for seeing that those who do not have the power are cared for. I don't think she would ever walk by on the other side. I hope Charlotte is going to become like her but I can't do it in a hurry because Charlotte is still only young. You see, Charlotte is quite a bit younger than I am.

P. D. James has said about women who write detective fiction: "I think women like writing about human beings and their reaction to each other, and detective novels … as well are about human beings and their reaction to extreme stress. I think that we often write about a fairly domestic situation; the contrast between this and the horror of the actual murder is very effective." Do you agree with that?

Very much, she's put it beautifully. I am really less interested in "who did it" than I am in the stress of the investigation afterwards, and all the other little sins you turn up, as well as the major crime. It's the little sins and what people will do to hide them that I find the most interesting and the most enthralling. It is like peeling the layers off an onion.

We can see this interest in all your novels. In your next novel, Funeral at Rutland Place, the narrator says that "the mystery of murder was ephemeral, even paltry: it was the emotions, the fire of pain, and the long wastelands afterwards that were real." In Callander Square, we're told that "murder and investigation reveal to us so many things about each other which we would rather not have known." In Resurrection Row, Pitt wonders whether Dominic is "afraid of the scandal and all the dark, corroding suspicions, the old sores opened up that investigation always brings." In The Cater Street Hangman, nobody can trust anyone else. Charlotte understands that it's "like ripples on a pool, and perhaps the rings would never stop." As recently as 1980, the police urged British women to think carefully about all the men that they knew, including their husbands and fathers, in case one of them was the dreaded Yorkshire Ripper.

This is exactly what I'm trying to write about—the distress and the suspicion and the fear and the re-examination of everything that you've previously taken for granted. I can remember frequently the radio, television and newspapers advising us to not exclude anybody. I wrote Cater Street before this happened but it's just this sort of situation and really I'm only using the crime as a catalyst to peel off the layers of everything else in people's lives and lay bare the truth. Truth has a fascination for me even if it's an unpleasant truth. There is something beautiful even in the most naked, bare or otherwise ugly truth simply because it is truth and in the end you have to return to it. Maybe you can't take it all at once but there isn't anything else to build upon.

Do you read detective fiction?

I've been reading quite a bit since I came here to Toronto and haven't had a television. I've been buying different authors and reading maybe three or four of their works and studying them and I've learned a lot. Before that I've thoroughly enjoyed people like Josephine Tey but really I have done very little reading. I was only writing to my own needs, instincts and obsessions but not to a formula. I do plan my book out before I start because I couldn't possibly just start writing and hope it would end up in the right place. I have to know the end before I write the beginning. Even in the historicals I'm writing toward a conclusion the entire time.

You've written two (as yet unpublished) non-mystery novels. Do you fear that fans will tie you to Charlotte and Thomas Pitt Victorian mysteries? Ruth Rendell's fans clamor for more Wexford novels every time she tries to write a non-Wexford and she'd like to do other things. Or are you still at the stage where you're very happy that people are clamoring for Charlotte and Thomas?

I'm delighted that people like Charlotte and Pitt. I'm aware that there is a difficulty with the historical novels I write because they are not "romantic." I know that there is a difficulty in classifying them but I'm not prepared to alter them. I'll just have to let my agent and such publishers as might be interested worry about what they're going to do. They might have to be published under a man's name because I understand that historical novels written by a woman are automatically slotted into "romance" but when they are written by a man they are slotted into perhaps the more political power struggle. My novels focus on the political power struggle. If readers see a woman's name on the jacket, the ones who want the political focus will not look at it and the ones that want romance will look at it and see that it's not what they wanted and put it down. As a result nobody will buy my book (both laugh).

Do mystery and non-mystery stories satisfy different parts of your literary being and if so in what way?

I suppose they do. I hadn't really thought about that but, yes, they do satisfy different parts of my personality. I enjoy constructing a mystery and then peeling it off bit by bit. The Victorian era is very different from the other historical periods that I have chosen. I think lots of people like a mystery. It is the same as filling in a crossword puzzle or discovering anything little by little. There is in most people something that likes to unwrap layer by layer and spin out the pleasure of discovering a mystery. My historicals deal with fictional people observing very tumultuous and conflicting real events. I just love the drama and the knowledge that this really happened. Human beings like myself experienced these things and were torn apart by these fears, terrors, beliefs and ideals, and writing about it is the next best thing to going back and actually seeing it. In fact, it's even better because you have all the excitement and the internal knowledge without the actual pain or physical danger. I have written a novel about the Spanish Inquisition called Thou With Clean Hands. I think the Spanish Inquisition period for the ethical conflict was one of the most fascinating. Many of the conflicts, particularly over "free agency," are still very apposite today. We don't these days feel passionately about religion but we do about politics and we'll bomb other people to death for their own good (laughs).

That's like the Crusades.

Yes, "better dead than red" or whatever it might happen to be which is the same basic feeling as "better dead than a heretic"—"we must cut out this infection before it spreads any further; you may not realize this, dear, but for your own good, better we should kill part of you than that all of you should fall to whatever it is that we don't like whether it's communism or Lutheranism or Catharism or whatever it might be." One can understand that there was a certain genuine feeling with the Inquisitors, "I'm saving your soul and if it has to be at your body's expense, well, that's dreadful but better your body perish than your soul." I must respect that. I can exalt, preach, teach, love and plead with you but if at the end of that you choose to believe differently that is your right. It's a very difficult conclusion to come to and even now we all try to persuade people who are closest to us of our own way of belief and we feel we are doing them a favor and that we have a responsibility to do so. It's very difficult to allow people you care for to go the way that you believe is a mistake. I have also written a novel about the French Revolution, Lower Than The Angels. The more I look at the tragic revolutions that we keep having in the world (how many we've had in the last forty years!) they do almost always seem to follow a very similar pattern. The French Revolution was perhaps in some ways the most dramatic because it had so many larger-than-life figures in it and it's sufficiently distant from us that we can see it more clearly now. Yet it's sufficiently close to us that there's a great deal of record about it down to what people actually said and what they wore and many diaries still extant. I think it is a valid thing to explore because we know a great deal about it and the pattern seems to persist tragically.

The Victorians hadn't accepted the combination of good and evil in one person. They could not accept ambivalence. Martha Prebble in The Cater Street Hangman is a good example of this. There's always a sense of irreconcilable pain and suffering in your novels. This creates tension between the Victorian rigidity and the Victorian disorder.

I would like to think that I don't tie these important experiences up because life isn't like that. Any crime is going to scar. Crime is a tragedy and it is going to scar a lot of people. It isn't going to be tidied away and the police can't put it in a bag and carry it off and that's the end of it. It's bound to leave wounds behind in almost everybody it touches. I would like to make my novels true to life at least in that respect.

In Paragon Walk, Pitt says that he dislikes hanging although it was "a part of society's mechanics to purge itself of a disease." W. H. Auden has talked about this and so has Julian Symons.

Characters at one time or another say a lot of things that I don't necessarily agree with. In the most recent novel I've written (which is as yet unpublished), Bluegate Fields, I made a fairly strong statement about hanging and that's what I really feel. Until such time as we can be absolutely sure that we are justified, I question hanging as a solution to crime. And even so I like to give people the opportunity to repent because people do change. I believe very, very passionately in the opportunity to repent. I can't afford not to have the opportunity and don't want to refuse it to anybody else. As far as hanging people is concerned, many mistakes have been made through British law. If you put somebody in prison and you discover afterwards that they were not guilty, that is bad enough; you could never give them back those years and the damage you've done them. But if you hang them, there is nothing at all you can do. If God were the judge, all right; He doesn't make mistakes but we do. Therefore, we can't afford to do something irreparable.

Would you feel that way if your mother or father had been the victim of a murder?

I don't know but I hope so. The fact that a person is my mother or father doesn't make them any more valuable than if they were somebody else's mother or father or nobody's mother or father. A wound to me is not more serious than a wound to anybody else.

Don't you think then that revenge is in any way mythically purging or psychologically purging as some people do?

No, it compounds the wound. It may have been Bacon who said, "He who revenges himself upon his enemy is equal, he who forgives him is superior," and I believe that very strongly. "Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord, I will repay." If you harbor hatred, you may damage somebody else but you certainly damage yourself. So, no, I don't agree that vengeance is purging. I think you've committed a second wrong against yourself.

You've written novels that belong to the tradition of murder as the inexcusable act and justice as the inevitable end. But in some of your novels the murderer escapes society's kind of justice. Nancy Wingate, who wrote a very good article on characters in detective fiction who have escaped society's retribution, believes that the satisfaction of the traditional mystery story comes not from the reader's certainty of the immanence of justice but from his/her certainty of the immanence of truth. It doesn't matter who does the killing, but only that the reader knows who did the crime. In your next novel. Funeral at Rutland Place, the reader discovers the murderer, but Charlotte lets the killer go free. Do you agree that detective stories gratify a passion for truth, not a passion for justice?

Yes, I agree. But while I believe that morality is absolute, it is also complex. I think we are becoming much less rigid in our requirements of detective fiction. We used to be very black and white. Killers were always beyond the pale regardless of how harshly they had been provoked and the law always had to catch up with them or they had to be killed or commit suicide or whatever. We're now getting away from the black and white and nearer to the shades of gray. The public will accept that the killer doesn't necessarily have to either shoot him or herself or get carried away in handcuffs to find a satisfactory end. We're getting much subtler as time goes by. And we're beginning to learn that there are an awful lot of other sins that are not necessarily crimes because it isn't practical in law to have them as such. Nevertheless, there are other things which are almost as unpardonable as killing.

Such as incest or child pornography?

Child pornography, yes, depending upon whether your mind is deranged. Incest, I feel, is a crime of distress and so is pederasty. Usually the people who offend are even more pathetic than the victims.

You are a Mormon with strong beliefs. Harry Kemelman uses the rubric of detective novels to convey the world of Judaism and his beliefs. Father William Kienzle does the same for Roman Catholicism in his detective stories. How do you incorporate your Mormon faith into your novels if you do?

It's there in my philosophy, in my beliefs, but it's never stated. It's coming through subconsciously. It must be in my characters' standards, their values, their beliefs, their sense of responsibility, and the sense that every human being is a son or daughter of God, that there is no separateness from any person regardless of age, sex, color or whatever. Yes, I am my brother's keeper; there is somebody to whom I am answerable. I'm answerable to God not only for what I do but for what I say and what I think. God is my father. To me, a father is somebody who has absolute standards but who will love me even though he doesn't always approve of me and who in the last extreme will do everything he can to save me.

I remember that you talked to me about the pragmatism of the Mormon faith. And Charlotte and Thomas are very pragmatic. Could you explain what you mean by that because I thought it was beautiful?

There is a great deal of deep doctrine which does touch on things of God, things of Holiness, but, yes, it's a very practical religion. It teaches you everything that you need to know to make your life more satisfactory, to help you realize your fullest potential. Mormonism teaches, "man is, that he might have joy," which, to me, is a wonderful thought. Everything that is, exists so that it might fulfill the measure of its creation, whatever it is. If it's a bird, it exists so that it might be the best possible bird; if it's a human being, it exists so that it might fulfill every good potential within it. I suppose Mormonism is such an ingrained part of my life, and it should be, that it comes through everything without having to be said.

I'm delighted. That's the nicest compliment you could possibly pay me.

Charlotte may be more you, but Thomas, as we said before, has your compassion. Did you choose the Victorian period because the gap between the "haves" and the "have nots" is so starkly and painfully emphasized?

Yes, because they are so closely side by side. I do love the dramatic, I must admit. The Victorian period is marvellously picturesque too, isn't it, it's beautifully visual. And the two extremes really rub shoulders in the street. I mean, the Devils Acres is in the shadow of Westminster. It's because they are so closely positioned side by side that the effect is so dramatic.

One of the things that strikes me about your novels is that Pitt only explores the upper class, the aristocracy. Why never the lower and middle class?

For a start, the aristocracy is more articulate, therefore, it gives me more scope for generally expressing my feelings and for getting a little bit of humor in. I like the scenery of the beautiful clothes and again, if you are entirely with the less well-off people, you don't get the dichotomy between the two totally different classes. Maybe it's a little bit of wish fulfillment but I identify much more easily with the upper class; I can imagine myself in that situation. We have many really excellent writers in Britain who write of the working class background and its people. I don't feel competent to handle it because I know that I don't understand it although my own grandparents and great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents, certainly on one side, were very ordinary people. I didn't know them, I've not been brought up in that background and I really think I'd probably make a hash of it. I can glimpse it, I hope, but I feel far more comfortable with the other people. It is more fun to get these catty drawing room parties. The upper class people are much more devious whereas the poorer people would be less subtle perhaps; they wouldn't need to mask things, they wouldn't have the leisure with which to develop these abilities and therefore I think it would be less fun to write about.

Also it allows Pitt the opportunity to exercise his psychological perception of people in an age where there was no forensic medicine or other modern tools of investigation.

Added to which, again, the sort of motive I deal with is more likely to crop up in the upper classes where they have something to protect. If you are very poor, your motives for murder are not likely to be those of protecting your situation or reputation.

In Funeral at Rutland Place, Charlotte wonders if people who get murdered have some "flaw in them that invites murder…. Like Shakespearean tragic heroes—one fatal deformity of soul that mars all the rest that might have been good." In a way that disturbs me because it means that the victim is responsible for his or her murder.

I'm not thinking of murder for gain or chance victims; I'm thinking of domestic situations where the person who is the victim and the person who is the offender have known each other for a long time and it's the result of a relationship. I believe that most murders are domestic. There is very often a flaw or something that has provoked the situation because murder is an awfully extreme way out of anything. In any relationship that is unsatisfactory it's very, very seldom contributed to by only one party. Nearly always both parties contribute to it and that was what Charlotte meant.

Victorians called them "bed" murders. What kind of research do you do for your books—newspapers, books on fashion and furniture, history books, books like Kellow Chesney's The Victorian Underworld?

Yes, particularly The Victorian Underworld. It's a marvellous book. I've got a whole shelf of books at home right from Kellow Chesney up to the High Society. There is a lovely book called, I think but I'm not sure, The Party That Lasted a Hundred Days about the London High Society Season. Also I've got two enormous copies of the illustrated London News for a couple of years in the 1880s and I go through those as well for the advertisements. I do use the books more. I've always been afraid of over-researching since I've been criticised for it earlier on and stories should be about people. Your research should only prevent you from making mistakes. There's tremendous temptation when you find research fascinating yourself to cram in every fact you know and kill the story and thereby kill the relationship between people.

Your novels are complete stories in themselves but they are also linked. There's an evolution. When you wrote The Cater Street Hangman did you have a plan for a series or did it just evolve organically?

It just happened. When I wrote Cater Street I only intended to write one novel. I got rather taken with the idea and I thought this is a lot of fun.

What did you think you'd write after Cater Street?

I was thinking of going back to historicals again. But when Cater Street was accepted that was absolutely marvellous. That was the first book I'd ever had accepted. I think it was my agent who said to me, "Have you thought of doing another one?" Besides I enjoy them.

How did you think of Charlotte and Pitt?

Occasionally, if you are fortunate, you get a character that does more than you expect just as sometimes you get characters you think are going to be great and they die on you. You realize you've written five chapters and you haven't mentioned them again. Pitt, however, sort of charged in and took over. I hadn't particularly intended him to come to life so much but I think I was a little enamored of him myself by the time I had finished.

Many detective novelists such as P. D. James and Friedrich Durrenmatt, believe that the detective and the criminal are mirror images of each other. I don't see that in your books at all.

It isn't there. It's something I've never seen myself. I hadn't even thought of it until I heard other people say so.

Writers like George Bernard Shaw and Colin Wilson have written about the relationship between the artist and the criminal. What do you make of these analogies?

You see, I'm just writing a story; I'm not trying to be as symbolic as that. I'm not being consciously intellectual. Of course, many protagonists have a capacity for evil but one's capacity for evil is pretty much governed by your situation and how tempted you are. Charlotte has a capacity to sometimes be thoughtless as well as all are and her evil is usually unintentional, but then a lot of people's evil is unintentional. It's mixed with fear, confusion and stupidity. Charlotte has hurt people along the way, said and done silly things, which after all is the level of evil that most of us reach. Very often if the evil that you do is greater than that it's because the circumstances have compounded to make your actions result in something much more evil.

In The Cater Street Hangman Charlotte said that when Verity was killed she had been abrupt with her, sharp with her, and now she was dead and she couldn't make it up to her. We talked a little before about how you create a plot. I believe you said that motive comes first.

The motive and the crime come first because I believe very strongly, as you probably observed, in making the crime spring from a very strong feeling. I was thinking the other day about the basic motives for crime that I find satisfactory—fear is one of the strongest, not necessarily physical fear but fear of losing something that is desperately important to you such as reputation, prestige or status. Also hatred, if you've been offended against so desperately that you simply cannot bear it. Anger must be a red hot thing or else outrage that somebody is surviving and is going to continue to do something so monstrous and there is no way within the law that you can prevent them. Greed is a motive but there are times when it's a satisfactory one. I don't like the motive that hinges on inheriting money. I would rather it be the capacity to make more money and somebody stands between you and it. I think I've used that once or twice. I don't like cold-blooded motives; I like people to be driven into corners because then you can identify with them. I view crime as a tragedy, not as an intellectual exercise.

What do you mean?

I suppose here you come back to the Mormon philosophy. Mormon philosophy teaches that the whole of life is progress and every good thing you do increases your spiritual growth while every evil thing you do or opportunity for the good lost, sets you back a step. Although you may well offend against others and you may offend against God. the greatest offence is against yourself because you have diminished what you might have been. If you commit an offence of any sort, the person who suffers irreparably is yourself because it is your soul that you have damaged. Therefore, any crime is a tragedy most of all for the person who commits it; of course, it's a tragedy for the person against whom it is committed but that may be reparable if not in this world perhaps in the next. As the offender, you can never be as if you hadn't done it; you may repent, you may learn from it, and you may forgive yourself, and certainly if you repent the Lord will forgive you, but the real damage you've done is to yourself.

Anne, why do you write?

I love to, I have to, it's necessary to me. The other day somebody said to me, "You shouldn't write so much, you are turning out too much," and I spoke to my agent Nancy, and said, "I don't know that I can help it." Her reply: "You can't write less, it's like telling the birds not to sing."

As Carlos Fuentes has said, a story is like something burning in your hand. You must let it go. You told me that this is the first interview that you've ever done. Some writers like V. S. Naipaul think that interviews are wounding, they take a part of you away. Other writers like the Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow says that interviews are like a thumbprint on his windpipe, yet the great poet and novelist James Dickey thinks that interviews are a great art form of our time. Do you find interviews both enjoyable and/or useful as both a writer and a reader?

I would have said that an interview by a good interviewer, such as yourself, is a mirror and therefore it is very useful indeed. It will hopefully show you your best side and perhaps some of the flaws because if you don't see the flaws you can't do anything about them. I find it enjoyable and extremely useful as a writer. I enjoy reading good interviews; if the creative process and the thought process and the beliefs of the writers are gone into, it gives an added dimension to their work. If I don't learn from this interview, I'm stupid.

Finally, are you comfortable with physical and/or psychological violence? Why do you think you write physical violence so well?

I find physical violence relatively easy to write even if it distresses me horribly when I read it back. I don't know. It's something I haven't resolved. It's a dark side of me that I don't understand yet.