Jon:  How would you describe the Trish Maguire series?

Natasha:  The novels are a way of looking at early twenty-first-century crime and relationships through the eyes of an intelligent, feeling, lawyer, who pulls few punches and is much braver than she believes. Two reviews particularly pleased me because they seemed to sum up what I want to do with the books. The first is from Val McDermid: 'Natasha Cooper brings a keen emotional intelligence to bear on the dark side of contemporary life. Trish Maguire is a heroine for the new millennium - competent, tenacious and adamant in her pursuit of the justice that sometimes eludes the law.' The second is from The Times (London) 'Convincing and hard-hitting, [Cooper's novels] explore how ordinary people get caught up in appalling events.'

Jon: What brought about the transition from the books with Willow King/Cressida Woodruffe to the books you write now? The earlier books were definitely more cozy oriented.

Natasha:  They were indeed! I loved writing them, but after a while the main joke about Willow/Cressida's double life began to pall. Too many people - both within the novels and among readers - knew the 'secret'. I also began to worry about making jokes about crime. As I came to research each novel I talked to more victims and more criminals and I became much more interested in the tough questions about what makes a criminal and why some people cross the line between fantasies of revenge and the real (horrible) thing.

Jon: You keep pretty busy even when you aren't writing novels. What other things do you do?

Natasha:  For the last three years I was very much involved in the Crime Writers' Association, first on the publicity sub-committee, then on the committee, and then in the Chair. That was enormous fun, and I hope useful, but it did not allow much spare time. Now I am still trying to catch up with all the things I didn't do during those years. I do a certain amount of reviewing and I have a column in Crime Time. I am also a judge on this year's Ellis Peters Historical Dagger. All that takes up quite a lot of time before I even think about having fun. I see friends, cook and eat with them (I love food!), visit exhibitions of modern art (and sometimes buy paintings). I very much like live theatre, but I don't go to plays as often as I would like.

Jon: Why did/do you use the names Daphne Wright and Clare Layton for some of your work?

Natasha:  Daphne Wright was the name I used when I was writing historical novels. When I decided to start writing crime fiction, both I and my publishers thought it would be better to have a separate name to avoid confusion. My Clare Layton novels are different again, and so again it was thought more sensible to show readers that with a different name.

Jon: The books you've written are kind of a cross section of the mystery genre. Is your taste in what you read similar? And who are some of your favorites?

Natasha:  I read right across the genre and have some favorites in almost all the sub-categories, e.g. Val McDermid; Reginald Hill; Donna Leon; Minette Walters; Sara Paretsky; Michael Connelly. The list could go on and on. From the Golden Age: Josephine Tey; Margery Allingham; Dorothy L. Sayers

Jon: You've said that you tend to start your book with more of an emotion, as opposed to a plot or character. When you write, do you follow a mental outline, or just let the book lead you where it wants to go?

Natasha:  I think I should be terrified of starting out without knowing where I was going! I tend to write a long and detailed synopsis - sometimes as much as 50 pages - but I nearly always find that something important changes before I'm more than half-way through the novel. In my latest, Out of the Dark, I suddenly realised that the killer couldn't have done it and that another character I had originally considered to be quite peripheral must have done it. That meant a lot of re- writing, but the book is definitely better because of it.

Jon: Do you work on one book at a time, or do you have ideas brewing for future books while you work on the current one?

Natasha:  I have a lot of ideas for future books swilling around in my mind as I work. Sometimes the ideas wither and die, but sometimes they stay in my imagination, growing almost without my noticing it. Those are the ones that turn into books.

Jon: Any thoughts on the state of publishing? and how it's changed since you were first published?

Natasha:  In the old days, authors were generally allowed six books before their publishers took a final decision on whether or not they would ever be profitable. These days it tends to be three if you are lucky or sometimes just one. I think this is a great pity. It takes time to build up and reach your readership and it takes time to develop your voice and your narrative skills.

Jon: What kind of things, and/or people, influenced your wanting to write?

Natasha:  First of all the happiness I found in reading and listening to stories as a child. I cannot imagine a happy life that did not include immersion in good novels. And I was lucky enough to have a novelist for a grandmother. She encouraged me, all through the time when I was battling with undiagnosed dyslexia and wondering whether I would ever do anything. She died when I was twelve, and I am very sad that she never knew I was going to make it.

Jon: Do you ever feel that you need to tone down what you write after a second reading? What kind of things get bumped when you do a rewrite?

Natasha:  I often have to take out long explanatory chunks about my characters' psyches. In a way I think it may be necessary to have the chunks in the first draft, but they would be a dreadful weight on the finished novel if I left them there. I also have a tendency to sentimentality, which I try to squish right down. It's partly that I come to care so much about my characters that I want to weep for them when bad things happen. But I do my best to control it.

Jon: From what I've seen, you are quite a busy lady. What kind of things do you do to relax?

Natasha:  Apart from the things mentioned in the answer to question 3), I swim, travel a little, sleep when I can, and play bridge.

Jon: Have all your book been available in the States, or just the recent ones?

Natasha:  All my Natasha Cooper novels have been published either by Crown (the very early ones) or St Martin's. The Poisoned Pen Press will be bringing out my first Clare Layton novel, Clutch of Phantoms, in the summer of 2002.

Jon: I've noticed that within the mystery community there is a strong bond between a lot of the people. Writers seem to support each other, and the fans are usually very loyal. Even the booksellers seem to be loyal to their favorite authors. Why do you think this is?

Natasha:  I think there are several reasons. The first is probably that the kind of people who are interested in reading and writing mysteries are interested in human nature and therefore enjoy interaction with real people too. The second is that we are reading and writing about the very dregs of humanity and so it is a wonderful refreshment to the spirit to meet the kind of interested, warm, intelligent people involved in the mystery-fiction world. I also think that the whole concept of series characters has a bearing on the point you make. We all become so attached to our own and other writers' characters that it forms a bond.

Jon: From what I understand, mystery hardcovers sell more copies than any other section of fiction, and mystery on the whole sells very well. And yet publishers and even some writers try to get away from the crime or mystery label. Why do think that is?

Natasha:  In a word, snobbery. When the devotees of high literature in general and modernism in particular decided that narrative was the least important aspect of any novel, they did a great deal of damage. I think they short-changed readers (the best great literature, ancient or modern, is always narrative-driven) and they made it seem shameful to critics, and therefore publishers, to make novels move fast and arouse emotion in their readers. Crime fiction is designed to do both, and so to them crime fiction seems to be an inferior genre.

Jon: In recent years I've read a lot more British authors than I ever had before. I've noticed that the books, on the whole, seem to be a bit more cerebral and less action oriented than American books. The television mysteries as well. Any thoughts on why that might be?

Natasha:  I'm not sure I can contribute anything very helpful to this question. Although I have lots of American friends and have travelled a little in the States, I do not know enough to comment. The only answers that have suggested themselves to me are that that the difference may be partly to do with the fact that few British citizens have guns and we do not have a routinely armed police force, and partly to do with geography. Britain is such a minute country that we don't have space for much action. Maybe that's why our amusements have to be more cerebral than physical. But who knows?

Jon: If you could travel back and talk to yourself as a teenager what kind of advice would you give the younger Natasha?

Natasha:  Don't be so afraid of failure. Take risks and believe in your own capacity to deal with the consequences.

Jon: What kind of movies do you enjoy? Any all time favorites?

Natasha:  My taste in movies is rather like my taste in fiction. I like all kinds from the cerebral delights of a film like Les Enfants du Paradis to the action-packed adventures of, say, Where Eagles Dare. I like the wit of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and the elegiac beauty of Babette's Feast. I love the old Bette Davis weepies and the slapstick of the Pink Panther films with Peter Sellars. Of the recent films I've seen, I think I probably liked The Pledge best. I thought Jack Nicolson was brilliant in it. Again, I could go on and on.

Jon: What other types of jobs have you had besides writing?

Natasha:  Immediately before I started to write, I worked in publishing. Before that, I worked in an art gallery, with an architect, and with an interior designer.

Jon: Do you let the fans influence your writing? And by that I mean, requests they make as far as the characters and their lives. Things like, I wish Trish would get a dog.

Natasha:  No, I am afraid I don't let fans influence my work to that extent. Trish is so much part of me and my imagination that if I added to, or took away anything from, her at the behest of someone else the whole construction might collapse.

Jon: What's the best part about being a writer? And then the inverse, what's the biggest downside?

Natasha:  The best part is discovering that readers understand what I am doing and get pleasure from it. The worst is the wretched moment in the middle of writing a novel when it seems dead between your hands and you have to remember the last time you felt like that and work through it, waiting for the glorious day when it springs to life and you know where you're going and where you've been and you move freely backwards and forwards, tightening, colouring, warming and generally enjoying your own work.

Jon: Is there anything about you that would really surprise people to learn?? Something like you always wanted to climb a mountain...?

Natasha:  I don't know whether it would surprise anyone, but the one thing that would change my life would be being able to sing. Alas, it will never happen.

Jon: What's the one thing that is always in your refrigerator?

Natasha:  Cabbage. A bottle of white wine. A bottle of Badoit. Milk. Cottage Cheese.