Rebecca Tope

Rebecca grew up on farms in the 1950s and 60s, and then went to Swansea University, where she did a BA in English and Philosophy. She had poems and short stories published in small magazines from that time on, but it was only after marrying, producing four children and working at a succession of part-time jobs that she got published with her first crime novel, A DIRTY DEATH. This book is based on childhood memories of farming life. The thrill of publication was slightly marred by the fact that the cow on the cover was a Friesian and not a Jersey. Rebecca still worries that people think she can't tell the difference...
The part-time jobs include freelance indexing and proofreading for London publishers; running antenatal classes for the NCT; counselling couples for Relate; and being the office girl for an undertaker. These were followed by several years as a milk recorder, involving cold dawn visits to mucky farms and working with the wide variety of herdsmen in charge. This experience features prominently in A DEATH TO RECORD. Both this and A DIRTY DEATH are to be reissued in 2012.
She currently writes the Thea Osborne Cotswolds crime series, which is gaining in popularity with every passing week.