It has to be said at the start that Ann's certainly led an interesting life so far, fitting in so many jobs-with-a-difference and in so many different places: from Devon to Northumberland, Fair Isle in the Shetlands and, of course, Huddersfield.
But she's gained most acclaim from her writing, with books like the Detective Inspector Ramsey series, The Crow Trap, The Sleeping And The Dead and now Telling Tales hitting the spot for fans of crimewriting here in West Yorkshire and beyond. She's also a member of the Murder Squad, a group of crime writers based in the North, and she regularly holds joint events with Crime Scene Investigations (CSI) officer Helen Pepper. She's busy and she's back!

Your latest novel, Telling Tales, is set in East Yorkshire. Have you been tempted to set a book in West Yorkshire - your current home - yet?

Well, the closest is Telling Tales. Possibly I will set one here in West Yorkshire eventually. It's much easier to write books when you're not there - especially if it's a place you like and miss. There's no impetus yet to set one in West Yorkshire. We go to the East Riding quite a lot. My Husband is a keen birdwatcher and Spurn Point, where the book is set, is obviously very good for rare birds so I've spent quite a lot of time there. I like the coast: growing up in Devon, right on the sea and then in Northumberland where we also lived on the coast. So Spurn's really the nearest to West Yorkshire as far as the coast is concerned. Spurn Point's a very distinctive place. I like the sense of impermanence, and the land crumbling into the sea, you're not quite sure where the sea starts and where the land ends. There are great flat wide open spaces, it's quite an impressive backdrop. I'd been reading lots of gothic novels when I wrote that, you always have magnificent weather when you go there. So maybe it's a bit overblown!

One of your previous jobs was as a probation officer, but that's not actually quite where the idea of writing crime novels came from was it?

Subculture: Birdwatchers

Well, I trained to be a probation office and did a sociology course and as part of that we had to do a long essay, The Study Of The Subculture. Everyone else did very 'social worker' things but I did 'twitchers' who are the passionate birdwatchers who chase around after very rare birds! I'd originally met a few through my husband. With the jargon they use and the cultural norms, I thought I could do quite a sensible essay about the subculture of twitching. My other seminar group were just amazed that people go to those lengths to see a rare bird, so it seemed that it would make quite a good subject for a novel and so my first book is about that. It's called A Bird In The Hand. It's about obsession, which I think is quite a good subject to write about!

Have you ever based your books on real life stories?

No, it's more a technical thing about writing. A lot of what we did [as probation officers] was write pre-sentence reports, people who'd been found guilty but hadn't yet been sentenced - either in the magistrates or in the Crown Court. You'd be sent in to do a report about their home circumstances, the history of the offender, it was all about trying to work out what had made them offend. That's a great character study if you think about it, it's a great way to learn about writing characters.

So is there quite a big gap between the world of the fictional crime novel and real life?

Behind bars: "It was all about trying to work out what had made them offend."

Yes, it's miles away! I've only met a couple of murderers. They were both pathetic, inadequate men, very boring. You certainly wouldn't want to write about them really, and you certainly wouldn't credit them with the ability to come up with some some elaborate motive or alibi. It just would never happen. I was talking recently to [Crime Scenes Investigations Officer] Helen Pepper who was saying most crime and murder isn't pre-planned. People were saying, "Oh everybody's seen the TV programmes and they know all about DNA so why don't the criminals make sure they don't need any?" She was saying that most murders happen on-the-spot, it's not planned and people aren't thinking in that way.

You mention Helen Pepper there...

Yes, she's a Senior Crime Scene Investigator and she's moved up a bit recently to train other professionals in 'managing' crime scenes. She trains people like detectives, police surgeons, anyone who might have to visit crime scenes. She came to a creative writing workshop I was running. She writes herself, and writes very well, but she's not finished a book yet. We've known each other for five or six years. We've done some readers' festivals together, did Cheltenham last year. I'll 'phone her and say: "Help! What does a body look like when it has been in a reservoir for 20 years?" She'll tell me, and if she can't then she'll look it up. The book I've just finished [not yet published] which is based in Shetland features a body that's been in a peat bog. I'm assuming that bodies will be preserved, but it's very hard to find any literature on recent deaths and peat bogs! But, as Helen says, they're not going to be any less preserved than they are if they're there for centuries, so I think I'm quite safe in saying the body will be preserved.

The main character in Telling Tales, Vera Stanhope, is female. Is this the first time she's appeared?

No. She appeared in the Crow Trap which I thought was going to be the first stand-alone novel because I had done a series before then. It was a change of direction really. It was meatier, more literary. It tells the story from the perspective of three women who are scientists in a cottage in the hills, miles from anywhere in the Northumberland National Park. They're doing an environmental assessment on an area before a proposed quarry is built. Vera appeared halfway through as the detective. I wanted to write her because even the American feminist writers still make their central female character good-looking and if she's not young then she's youngish, able to run and go to the gym. I thought that it's just not fair really! We need a central female character who is overweight, has bad skin, is middle-aged and a spinster. Vera's all those things, but I think she's still very strong and human. I thought she was going to be a one-off, but she's got under my skin and is back in Telling Tales. In this book she's working in the East Riding because there's the possibility that there's been a miscarriage of justice and quite often they send in officers from different forces to investigate in those circumstances.

"Doddery": Joan Hickson as Miss Marple

Well, I think Vera would have loved a family and relationship but it's a bit late for her now so she's alone, single and strong. I really was annoyed that I was reading all these books with characters who were fit and beautiful and - apart from the doddery characters like Miss Marple and others like her - there didn't seem to be any real, strong women. I certainly don't wish to take crime fiction back to that. The great thing with crime fiction is it's so wide. Authors like Quentin Jardin and Paul Johnson are writing in a huge variety of different ways.

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