VIDEO: Why it's such a great time for women crime writers right now

Her Crime Time Roadshow grand finale will bring together Peter James, Simon Toyne, Graham Bartlett and William Shaw live on stage, hosted by Victoria, at the Friends Meeting House, Ship Street, Brighton, BN1 1AF with tickets available on https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/crime-time-roadshow-tickets-537580205867

“The background is that I have hosted a podcast on Crime Time FM called On The Sofa With Victoria which has run for the past year and a half,” Victoria explains. “Each fortnight I discuss the latest trends and themes in crime fiction with a panel of high-profile authors. Recent guests have included Jeffery Deaver, Ian Rankin, David Baldacci, Val McDermid, Ruth Ware and Linwood Barclay. We have had some really fabulous guests and I can't believe they have said yes. But it has been so successful that I decided I wanted to do something else with it. We launched when Covid was still in full throe and since then we have begun to emerge from Covid. I just thought it would be nice to do some live events on the back of it and that's what we have been doing.”

In Victoria’s book Truly Darkly Deeply, 12-year-old Sophie and her mother, Amelia-Rose, move to London from Massachusetts where they meet the charismatic Matty Melgren, who quickly becomes an intrinsic part of their lives. But as the relationship between the two adults fractures, a serial killer begins targeting young women with a striking resemblance to Amelia-Rose. When Matty is eventually sent down for multiple murders, questions remain as to his guilt – questions which ultimately destroy both women. Nearly 20 years later, Sophie receives a letter from Battlemouth Prison informing her Matty is dying and wants to meet...

“The book was inspired by serial killers but so many books have been written from the point of view of the wife or the partner of a serial killer but really not many have been written from the point of view of the children. You think of the challenge of growing up with the legacy of what has gone before and the guilt that they feel, if they do feel any guilt and that's what this book looks at. It’s a serial killer book but it's also a coming of age narrative. It's her coming to terms with what she understands happened and with what it means to live with a monster.”

It comes at a fabulous time for women crime writers – a time when women crime writers are so popular there are some men crime writers these days who decide to disguise the fact they are male by opting for initials instead: “I think things have changed from the days of the troubled male detective with a drink problem stumbling upon a crime. I think women are much more interested not in the heroic aspect, the action aspect, but really in the psychology of the crime and the criminal.” In Victoria’s case she is particularly interested in looking at it from the point of view of the victim: “Crime fiction at its best explores the question and in this case in my book it is the victim’s question ultimately, what is it like to have a father as a serial killer.”

​

​