I have a sort of benign fondness for Catherine Cookson, due perhaps to the fact that when I was growing up in Northumberland you could barely pop out for a pint of milk without tripping over a TV crew shooting one of her novels - in fact, they filmed a bit of one on my great uncle's farm when I was about 10. Plus, my grandma was a Cookson devotee and used to give me her books to read when I was off sick from school. Twenty years on, I have to confess that I can't remember a single plot detail, except that one book began with a girl from South Shields who'd been away from home for a couple of years coming home with her new husband, who was - gasp! - black.

Apparently, however, turn-of-the-century race-related scandal is no longer juicy enough for today's readers. According to this year's library lending figures, published today, Wor Kate, as she's affectionately known round my way, has dropped out of their top 10 most borrowed authors for the first time since records began.

Cookson, whose books have sold more than 100m copies in over 30 countries, is now a lowly 11th on the list, having been overtaken by crime novelists, thriller writers and children's authors. For the third year running, the title of the UK's most borrowed author goes to children's laureate Jacqueline Wilson, who notched up more than two million loans over the last year. Cookson spent an astonishing 17 years at the top of the chart before being bumped by Wilson in 2002.

She is also slipping on the list of most borrowed adult fiction titles, where she doesn't make it into the top 10 at all - quite a fall from grace considering that just five years ago she occupied nine out of the top 10 spots. Her place at the top has been taken by Patricia Cornwell with her thriller Blow Fly, while the rest of the top 10 features other crime writers, including John Grisham, James Patterson and Ian Rankin.

So what gives? Why this sudden lurch away from gentle historical romances, in which educated working-class heroines rail against class barriers, to blood-soaked detective fiction?

Generally when a list such as this emerges and the shift has occurred in the opposite direction - ie everyone has switched from violent crime to family sagas - pundits nod wisely and tell us that the public is using literature as a security blanket, seeking to return to a simpler time when people hadn't heard of climate change or suicide bombers or bird flu. Perhaps, therefore, our rejection of Cookson's gentle brand of regional romance signifies that, instead of trying to insulate ourselves from the big bad world outside, we've decided to accept that it's there and use books to learn how to exist within it. Who among us, after all, will gain any practical benefit from reading about how to cope when your neighbours accuse you of witchcraft? More useful, surely, to garner tips from Patricia Cornwell on the best way to throw a psychotic killer off your trail.

Whatever the reason, it seems that Catherine Cookson's spell over Britain's book-borrowers has finally been broken. But Catherine, rest in peace: although your library-going public has deserted you, I still know what I'll be buying my grandma for her birthday.