Race To Death Blog TourAbout the book: 'Moments before, he had been enjoying a day out at the races. Now he could be dying…. As he fell a loud wind roared past his ears, indistinguishable from the roar of the crowd. The race was over'. A man plummets to his death during the York Races. Suicide or murder? Newly-promoted DI Ian Peterson is plunged into a complex and high-profile case, and as the body count increases, the pressure mounts for his team to solve the crimes quickly. But the killer is following the investigation far more keenly than Ian realizes and time is running out as the case suddenly gets a lot closer to home... You can read my review HERE
Leigh on why she decided to write from the perspective of a female protagonist.
Avoiding gender stereotypes According to Sally Wainwright, the writer responsible for television's Rizzoli and Isles, "Women get more and more interesting the older they get. I certainly enjoy writing women more than men because of all those things we know about – like we have to work twice as hard to get to the same place." Geraldine Steel came about as the result of a considered and deliberate choice to create a female protagonist for my first crime series. Having begun to write with a male protagonist, I changed, not because I agree that female characters are more interesting than their male counterparts, nor because I think women necessarily have a harder time than men in the workplace. That may well still be true for many individuals. No doubt there are statistics that prove more men rise to the top in business, but that is no longer the case in many professions. Already more than fifty per cent of UK lawyers are women, and by 2017 there will be more female than male doctors. Overt sexism is a thing of the past in the Metropolitan Police Service, despite what many writers of fictional detective books might suggest. Obviously misogynists could be found anywhere, and conflict makes for heightened tension in fiction. So one of my own detective chief inspectors is, arguably, rather sexist, which gives Geraldine an additional difficulty to contend with at work. The reason I switched to a female protagonist was personal. Quite simply, I was more comfortable writing from the point of view of a woman. I felt on home ground. It would be easier to avoid resorting to clichés. How do men feel on seeing an attractive woman, for example? I was keen to avoid resorting to gender stereotypes. Choosing a female protagonist seemed to be working well, with the Geraldine Steel series becoming increasingly popular, receiving great reviews, translated into other languages, nominated for several major awards, and even attracting the attention of a major television production company. So far so good. Only now, thanks to the success of the Geraldine Steel series, I am writing a spinoff series for her rather good looking sergeant, Ian Peterson. So I have come full circle and the protagonist in one of my series is a man, after all. "I suppose I'll have to start going to football matches," I said, wondering which team Ian would support. "That's such a stereotype," was the response from the young man I was speaking to. So on reflection I've decided that Ian will be like other characters in my books, regardless of gender, as believable a person as I can make him. He's not very different to Geraldine, occasionally heroic, generally good natured, but sometimes bad tempered. And he won't be going to any football matches.
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