Full Name Rebecca Tope Role Novelist Name Rebecca Tope | Occupation Author, journalist Nationality British | |
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Born 1 January 1964 (age 60) ( 1964-01-01 ) Cheshire Books A Cotswold Killing, Death In The Cotswolds, A Cotswold Mystery, A Grave in the Cotswolds, A dirty death | ||
Rebecca Tope is a British crime novelist and journalist. She is the author of three murder mystery series, featuring the fictional characters of Den Cooper, a Devon police detective, Drew Slocombe, a former nurse, now an undertaker, Thea Osborne, a house sitter in the Cotswolds, and Persimmon Brown, a florist in the Lake District. Tope is also ghost writer of the novels based on the ITV series Rosemary and Thyme.
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Background
Tope was born in 1948 in the Midlands and raised in Cheshire, then moved to Devon with her farming family. The farming life with its cruelty, death, frustration alternated with idyllic summer days, the teamwork of the harvest, the delight of the young animals, made for the powerful experiences that inspired her to write her first novel A Dirty Death.
She had various jobs before becoming an author, such as pre-natal instructor, marriage counselor, and funeral director, all of which gave her various human and social experiences, which she uses in her books.
In 1992, she founded Praxis Books, a small British press.
The books are set in real villages (Duntisbourne Abbots, Frampton Mansell, Blockley, Temple Guiting, Lower Slaughter, Cold Aston and Hampnett, Broad Campden, Snowshill and Winchcombe, the setting for the next 2013 title. She uses a kind of "anti research", avoiding discussion with any of the villagers, but does walk along the footpaths and visits most of the village pubs. She is currently working on a biography of Sabine Baring-Gould.
She attends many crime fiction events.
She was the Crime Writers' Association membership secretary of 2009, Christine Poulson takes over for 2010.
Tope lives in rural Herefordshire, on a smallholding near to the Black Mountains. She has a farm with Cotswold sheep and rare breed pigs. Her hobbies include spinning wool from her sheep, knitting and weaving. She takes commissions for big warm pure wool throws and blankets.