She is the author of eight novels, including the Sara Selkirk series, and Half Broken Things,[1] which won the Crime Writers' Association's (CWA) Silver Dagger.
She began writing in 1996 after a short story of hers was runner-up in a national competition sponsored by Good Housekeeping magazine.
A visit to the Roman Baths with crime writer P. D. James germinated the plot of her first novel, Funeral Music (1998), the first in the Sara Selkirk series.
In 2008 she was a Heinrich Böll writer-in-residence on Achill Island, County Mayo, Ireland.
[citation needed] Half Broken Things was adapted as a television film in 2007, starring Penelope Wilton.