Clare mackintosh biography

Goodreads Author

Born

Website

http://www.claremackintosh.com

Twitter

claremackint0sh

Genre

Crime, Memoir, Thriller

Member Since

August 2014

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/claremackintosh

Alumna, former police officer and Sunday Times bestselling author, Clare Mackintosh, read French and Management Studies from 1994–99. She talks to alumna and journalist, Jessica Jonzen, about how a careers evening at Royal Holloway set her on her path.

It’s often the seemingly insignificant decisions that we make which can have the greatest impact on our lives. If novelist Clare Mackintosh had decided to go to a different careers talk at Royal Holloway one evening in 1999, her life might have taken a very different course.

"It was a term when all sorts of employers were coming in to talk to us and I’d actually planned to go and listen to a talk on being a management consultant, which a lot of my peers were doing. I don’t know why, but I went to the police talk instead" she says.

"I was absolutely captivated; it was specifically about joining the fast track programme as a graduate. They talked about how tough it was to get in, which sparked a bit of my competitive nature, and it clearly was a very high-octane job but you needed to be switched on. It pressed all my buttons so I applied."

Despite showing a flair for writing at school, Clare had never considered that it would be a viable career option for her. "I wanted to write when I was a teenager; it just didn’t feel like a career choice that was open to me", she says. "I didn’t know anyone who worked in the Arts or media and I think that role models are so important. So, although it wasn’t closed off to me, it certainly didn’t feel like an open avenue."

The selection process for the Accelerated Promotion Scheme for Graduates was gruelling with extended interviews, presentations to boards, debates and observation. "I really thrived on it" Clare says. "The year I joined there were 3000 applicants and they only took 12." Clare joined Thames Valley Police and went on to enjoy a 12-year career, rising to Inspector before leaving in 2011.

Today, her life couldn’t be more different. Her dazzling 2014 debut

British author and former police officer

Clare Mackintosh is a British author and former police officer.

Early life and education

Mackintosh went to Royal Holloway University in Surrey, taking a degree in French and Management, and spent a year in Paris as part of the course, working as a bilingual secretary.

Police career

Mackintosh joined the police force upon graduation. She was posted on promotion to Chipping Norton as town sergeant before becoming Thames Valley Police's operations inspector for Oxfordshire. Mackintosh spent 12 years in the police force before leaving in 2011 to become a full-time writer.

Novels

Mackintosh's debut novel I Let You Go, published in 2014, was a Richard & Judy Book Club pick. It won Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award in 2016, beating J K Rowling writing as Robert Galbraith. In October 2016, the French translation of I Let You Go (Te Laisser Partir) won "best international novel" at the Cognac Festival Prix du Polar awards.

Her second novel, I See You, was also a Richard & Judy Book Club pick, winning the readers' vote. It charted at number 1 in The Sunday Times original fiction list and was shortlisted for Crime & Thriller Book of the Year in the British Book Awards.

In March 2018 Mackintosh published her third novel, Let Me Lie, which charted at number 1 in The Sunday Times original fiction list. It was also chosen as a Richard & Judy Book Club pick.

As of May 2019 her novels were published in more than 40 languages and had sold more than two million copies worldwide.

Mackintosh's fourth novel, After the End, was published in hardback in June 2019 and became an instant Sunday Times bestseller. She then published three more Sunday Times bestsellers: Hostage,^[1

Interview

Claire Mackintosh discusses the similarities between her careers as a police officer and a writer of two bestsellers - I Let You Go and I See You

Your background is interesting—you went from police detective to journalist to novelist. What inspired your career transitions and how do you think the three relate?

I spent 12 years in the police and loved every minute of it, but it became increasingly hard to balance a busy career with life as a mother of three young children. I took a career break and reinvented myself as a freelance feature writer, and at the same time I wrote I Let You Go. I signed a two-book publishing deal the month before I was due back at work, so I handed in my notice and never went back.

The thread that links all three types of work is storytelling: as a detective I told victim's stories on their behalf; collected witnesses' stories to support allegations of crime. My job was to pull together all the threads of a story and present it to a court in such a way that they could decide on a verdict. In that way it wasn't dissimilar to the stories I now present to readers.

Given your experience in the police force, do you find it necessary to do additional research before writing? If so, what kind of research do you do?

I didn't need to do much research for I Let You Go, although I did check some procedure with a ...

Full Interview

Books by this Author

Books by Clare Mackintosh at BookBrowse