I first met the writer Magdalen Nabb, who has died of a stroke aged 60, in her adopted home town of Florence, when I became children’s editorial director at HarperCollins and she was one of my authors. While our working relationship focused on her children’s writing, particularly the (very English) Josie Smith books, her career had been established with her crime novels, set in Florence, of which Death of an Englishman (1981) was the first, and the last, Vita Nuova, will appear next year.
Magda had settled in Florence with her young son, Liam, in 1975. She had recently holidayed in the city, her marriage had just broken up, and she started working as a potter in nearby Montelupo. In the late 1970s and early 80s, she was curator of Casa Guidi, home in the 19th century to Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and it was while there that her first novel was published. Featuring the investigator Marshal Salvatore Guarnaccia, the series of 13 novels that followed build an intimate and intricate portrait of the city and its communities. But despite the often gruesome murders that reveal its dark underbelly, Florence is in safe hands - those of Guarnaccia, a man who combines strength with compassion.
At a World Mystery Convention in 2001, in response to a question about terrorism, Nabb said of her crime novels: “I do offer the fact that life goes on, and I think that my marshal will lead you by the hand and you will carry on because he’s there. I think people need stories ... when we see this chaos in the world, we want to be told stories ... closure in a story does help to make some order out of chaos.”
Born Magdalen Nuttall at Church, near Blackburn, Lancashire, Magda, the middle girl of three sisters, was brought up in nearby Ramsbottom, and educated at Bury convent grammar school and art college in Manchester. She trained as a teacher, taught at Holcombe Brook, near Bury, and married James Nabb, with whom she had Liam.
She knew from an early age about chaos in the world and the arbitrary nature of death, and her traumatic childhood experiences informed all her writing. When she was seven, her father, just 32, died of rheumatic fever; when she was 13, her mother died suddenly in the street while out shopping with her younger sister. The girls were sent to live with an aunt, but two weeks later their uncle died. “At 13, I was surrounded by bereaved people who were dependent on me. My aunt was crying all day,” Magda recalled.
In a recurring dream, she would return to her childhood home to find the pots still on the table and a mess that had been left for her to clean up. She would cry with exhaustion, feeling that her lifeblood was being sucked out. Relief eventually came in a dream in which she remembered that it was her mother who had left her - and she could at last feel angry: “It was a real turning point.” It is possible to see in Marshal Salvatore Guarnaccia, who owes much to Magda’s great friend Capitano [now Generale] Nicolino d’Angelo of the Florence carabinieri, a yearning for a different kind of lawgiver, the father that Magda never really had. It is a theme she also explored in her children’s books: “I wish I had a dad,” says seven-year-old Josie in Josie Smith in Winter (1998). “Children write and ask me why there is no dad,” Magda once told me. “But I won’t say because that way anyone who has no dad can identify with Josie.”
Starting with Josie Smith (1989), there are 11 Josie books (another will appear next year). In the early volumes, Josie is five, and in the later books she is six or seven. Josie and Eileen (1991) won the six- to eight-year-old category of the Smarties book prize.
The books were prompted by an unexpected visit to the Browning house by Mrs Chadwick, owner of the Ramsbottom corner shop that Magda had used as a child. “She’d last seen me when I was 14,” Magda told me, “but it was as if she’d seen me yesterday. She was on a coach tour. She started talking about cream slices: ‘Your mother liked those; you preferred buns.’ It inspired me to start Josie Smith. It was like I’d never been away.”
The books are set in the mill village of Ramsbottom; Josie attends the school where Magda had been a happy pupil. That there is a timeless quality to Magda’s depiction of Josie Smith is no surprise, for it seems clear that Josie is Magda as a child. In these books, full of domestic and school life, her childhood self at the age when the world was still safe enough, before the loss of her mother, was constantly revisited.
Magda’s passion for horses - she was a keen rider - found expression in The Enchanted Horse (2001), a magical tale about Irina, a child whose spirit feels crushed. She is eventually able to gain in confidence and inner strength through caring for a battered model of a horse, which, of course, comes alive. The story is a testament to Magda’s belief that “there are very few adults who do not tread on children’s dreams”. She described herself as a “childist, not a feminist”, adding, “It is a fact that adults don’t live in the imaginative world of children.”
As her editor for a time, I remember well my admiration at the minimal work needed when a manuscript arrived from Magda, a sentiment echoed by the editor of her adult books. She would “think the story out” and write it when it was ready. This was just as well since she did not take kindly to disagreement. Her determination and tenacity served her well following a serious stroke 13 years ago - I was amazed to hear that she was riding again. Often imperious, she could take against people. But she could also be immensely kind and generous.
She supported charities involving animals and refugee children. She was also a staunch friend. When my daughter Catherine needed help to leave a miserable au pair job in Florence, Magda had her safely lodged in her beautiful flat in Piazza Piatellina within two hours. I could not have prevailed upon a more ardent rescuer. Her son survives her.
· Magdalen Nabb, novelist, born January 16 1947; died August 18 2007
