Barbara Cleverly has lived in Cambridge, England, for many years and written 15 crime thrillers. Her debut, The Last Kashmiri Rose, was named a 2002 Book of the Year by the New York Times. Enter Pale Death (recently published by Soho Press) is her 12th mystery starring Scotland Yard detective Joe Sandilands.
On your nightstand now:
I've extracted four from the shifting cargo: Don't Point That Thing at Me by Kyril Bonfiglioli, Slow Horses by Mick Herron, The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse and The Complete Dorothy Parker. I like to fall asleep laughing, and any one of these does it for me!
Favorite book when you were a child:
I was reared on adventure stories: John Buchan, Zane Grey, Viking sagas. Man-eaters of Kumaon by Jim Corbett is the true-life, captivating tale of an Indian tiger-hunter who became one of the first preservers of wildlife. Colonel Corbett established a National Tiger Reserve in the foothills of the Himalayas. I still love the man and shamelessly wove Colonel Corbett's character into one of my books set in India.
Your top five authors:
Jane Austen, Raymond Chandler, Pliny the Elder, Marcel Pagnol and P.G. Wodehouse.
Book you've faked reading:
All of Dickens. I can quote bits, but the whole oeuvre overwhelms and discourages me. He's so good he makes me pull the plug on my keyboard.
Book you're an evangelist for:
The Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings cookbook [Cross Creek Cookery]. My original is disintegrating with use. It falls open at "Black Bottom Pie!"
Book that changed your life:
Gods, Graves and Scholars by C.W. Ceram. This opened my eyes to archeology, which has been an abiding enthusiasm.
Favorite line from a book:
Mark Forsyth's advice on how to handle alliteration, from The Elements of Eloquence: "...if you say, 'Full fathom five thy father lies,' you will be considered the greatest poet who ever lived. Express precisely the same thought any other way--e.g. 'your father's corpse is 9.144 metres below sea level'--and you're just a coastguard with some bad news."
Which character you most relate to:
"Relate to," not necessarily "admire?" There are two ladies who strike a deep, twanging chord with me: Mattie Ross in True Grit by Charles Portis (my young self) or Grendel's Mother in Beowulf (the monster I fear becoming!). Any girl who gets angry and comes through a door with a gun or a battle-ax in her hand will have my empathy. (I was born in Yorkshire in the lands of the turbulent Celtic tribe of the Brigantes, and I think I'd know what to do with a battle-ax.)
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. Hoping that this time I might be able to follow the plot.
Book you most admire in your own genre:
In historical crime fiction, Steven Saylor's Roma Sub Rosa series about Gordianus the Finder: historically accurate, gripping plots, fisticuffs and swordplay. And a hero you'd love to wake up with next morning.