Stalker fear of No 1 crime bestseller...
BRITAIN’S bestselling crime writer Peter James’s latest novel depicts a crazed fan whose obsession with a rock superstar turns very sinister. But James did not need to delve very far into his imagination for his fictional story because in real life, I can reveal, he is himself being stalked.
A woman in her mid-thirties, he says, has been trailing him all over the country for ten years.
James, who gave up a successful career as a film producer — hits included The Merchant Of Venice with Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons — to write his Roy Grace detective novels, says that he has found the whole experience utterly chilling.
‘She has been following me for years,’ he says. ‘She is everywhere I turn. If I am in Norwich she is there. If I am in Cardiff then she is there too. She is unhinged. She genuinely believes she has ownership of me.’
Two years ago, James, 63, whose books have sold 11 million worldwide in 35 languages — thought he had shaken off his stalker after she stormed out of a signing in Leicestershire.
‘I asked her name and how to spell it and she took offence because she assumed I should know who she was,’ he tells me.
But six months ago at a book signing in Bristol the woman reappeared. Now, she sends the thriller writer up to ten threatening emails a day, some of them 10,000 words long. Among other things, she insists she cannot live without him.
Police have carried out a background investigation. ‘They say there is nothing they can do at this stage,’ says James, who now employs a full- time security guard and has spent tens of thousands of pounds on a 24-hour security monitoring system for his home in West Sussex, where he lives with second wife Helen.
‘The first thing I do now when I walk into a bookshop is look into the crowd because I know she will be there watching me.
‘I worry that one day she’s going to read one of my new books and not like what she reads.’
James’s Not Dead Yet is out in June. ‘In my book the fan gets to meet her idol, a woman, expecting to be greeted with open arms but the star cuts her dead and it flips her out. Soon afterwards, she starts planning to murder her.’