As a writer of crime novels, my friend Lesley Grant-Adamson, who has died aged 83, won plaudits from that doyenne of the genre, PD James, who wrote of her: “She knows how to create an atmosphere of unease and incipient horror.”
Lesley, who gave up her staff job as a feature writer at the Guardian to concentrate full-time on writing murder mysteries, produced 15 novels, many short stories and a variety of non-fiction books.
Her first book, Patterns in the Dust, was published by Faber & Faber in 1985 and was shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association’s John Creasey award for first crime novels.
Given Lesley’s newspaper background, it is not surprising that journalism loomed large in her work; her first five novels involve a gossip columnist (Rain Morgan) as the sleuth-in-chief.
Born in London, Lesley was the daughter of Edna (nee Puddefoot), a civil servant, and Edwin Heycock, who was in the army then worked for the National Assistance Board. The family moved to south Wales during the second world war, when Lesley was an infant, to stay with Edna’s parents in the village of Trealaw, in the Rhondda Valley, returning to London when she was seven. She later attended Dame Alice Owen’s school, which was then in Islington.
Lesley learned her trade as a reporter for the Coventry Evening Telegraph, while her boyfriend, Andrew Grant-Adamson, worked as a journalist in Leamington Spa. The pair married in 1968 before moving south three years later, when Andrew became a public relations executive in London with Pirelli.
Lesley got a job as a subeditor with the Mid-Herts Advertiser, then as a sub on the features pages of the Guardian, before becoming one of the paper’s feature writers. Interested in Welsh subjects, she interviewed the novelist Richard Llewellyn, the author of How Green Was My Valley, and also did a profile of the comedian and folk singer Max Boyce. In 1980, she left to write novels.
Her short stories have been read on BBC Radio, and appeared in magazines and anthologies, and her renown as a crime writer led to commissions from Hodder for books on the writing of crime fiction. She taught at the Arvon Foundation, and at Ty Newydd, the writing centre in north Wales. After fellowships with the Royal Literary Fund, she taught a City University evening class in writing crime fiction and also held posts at Homerton College and Newnham College, at the University of Cambridge (2001-03).
In the village of Debenham, Suffolk, where she and Andrew lived in their later years, Lesley threw herself into the local community, becoming heavily involved in the history society and the organisation of arts and literary events. Their commitment to the green agenda was so great that they eventually moved into a bungalow in the village that they had had specially adapted for the use of energy from sustainable sources.
Andrew died last year. Lesley is survived by two nephews and two nieces.
