‘This bad-girl heroine fired my imagination’
Kate Griffin, 54, from St Albans, Hertfordshire, didn’t realise how much a character from a Victorian novel would inspire her
‘Sitting in my teenage bedroom in Watford, I was transported to 19th-century Regency Britain by William Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. My best friend Leah, a fellow bookworm, had recommended it, and despite only being 14, I was utterly captivated by the novel. Its scenes depicting chandelier-lit ballrooms with women in ornate gowns, swirling to music couldn’t have been further from my purple bedroom with its Bay City Rollers posters on the walls. Yet, I felt I was there.
The main character, Becky Sharp, a cynical social climber from a bohemian background who seduces upper-class men, was unlike any female character I’d come across before. She was sassy, defiant, amoral and smart – not the ‘nicest’ woman or a typical heroine, but a survivor with a gritty determination. I thought she was marvellous.
Also, as a 4ft 11in bookish teen with glasses, to find a character who wasn’t beautiful but who had a natural sparkle and confidence encouraged me to believe that looks weren’t everything.
I took the book with me when I went to study English Literature at Royal Holloway, reaching for it when I wanted to escape for a few hours.
Content with being a passionate reader, I never harboured any burning ambition to be a novelist. That changed in 2012 when I stumbled across a competition to find a new crime writer with a strong female character.
My husband, Stephen, urged me to enter, saying I was a natural storyteller and definitely had a book in me.
‘I sat down at my desk and began to type. That day, the Kitty Peck character was born’
Unconvinced, one rainy Saturday afternoon I sat down at my desk and began to type. That day the Victorianera character around which I’ve based three novels – Kitty Peck – was born.
A 17-year-old music hall seamstress, from the East End of London, Kitty is bold, strong and impetuous and, in my first book, she turns detective after dancing girls begin to go missing from the foggy, sleazy backstreets where she works and lives. My long-standing love of Thackeray’s bad girl had obviously left its mark on my imagination.
To my huge surprise, I won the competition. In 2013, my debut novel Kitty Peck And The Music Hall Murders
was published and went on to be shortlisted for a Crime Writers’ Association award. Since then I’ve written two more and am currently working on the fourth in the series.
To begin a new and successful career since turning 50 has been unexpected but wonderful. My love of Vanity Fair
inspired me to create a female character in control of her destiny who is true to herself, and it’s a rule I try to live by myself as well.’