Brought to book

Multi-award winning crime writer Mari Hannah discusses the secrets of her success and the part Northumberland has played in it, with JANE HALL

Author Mari Hannah was a teenager when she first arrived in the North East. A military child, the first 14 or so years of her life had been a rollercoaster of friendships and different schools, as her father was posted to new locations across the UK and overseas with the British Army.

Then he was transferred to Fenham Barracks in Newcastle (now an Army Reserve installation a stone’s throw from St James’ Park). The family followed, and Mari’s parents gave her the option of once again facing the social, emotional, and educational challenges of joining yet another school or finding a job. She chose the latter.

Her peripatetic childhood meant she had called many places home, but nowhere she had lived had ever spoken to her heart. Like many before her, however, the North East – and especially Northumberland – struck a chord with the young Mari.

She quickly fell in love with the area’s people, its wildness and geographical beauty. And when her dad left the Army and her parents retired to Warrington in Cheshire (her father is from Liverpool and her mother from London), Mari stayed in the North East. Now she is bringing the area where she worked for many years as a probation officer and raised her two sons to a wider audience as the multi-award winning author of three crime series: DCI Kate Daniels, Ryan and O’Neil, and Oliver and Stone.

The dramatic and diverse backdrops of Newcastle and Northumberland – where Mari lives in the Tyne Valley with her partner Mo, a former murder detective – feature heavily in all 15 of her page-turning police procedurals and thrillers.

Her sixteenth book and fifth in the Oliver and Stone series, Her Sister’s Killer, is due for publication on March 6. And Northumberland and Tyneside are once again much to the fore in this gripping, twisting page turner centred around a decades-old unsolved murder and the dark world of child trafficking.

Since her first book – The Murder Wall featuring DCI Kate Daniels – was published in 2012, Mari’s name has become synonymous with the North East She is one of an elite group of crime authors championing the region, among them Ann Cleeves, whose Vera Stanhope stories were the inspiration for the long-running ITV series starring Brenda Blethyn as the eponymous DCI; LJ Ross and her DCI Ryan books centred around the likes of Cragside, Lindisfarne, the Angel of the North, and Heavenfield near Chollerford; and Trevor Wood, whose uncompromising novels, including his debut set in Newcastle, The Man on the Street, have won a clutch of awards.

Mari too can boast a bookshelf full of accolades, including the Polaris First Book Prize, the Northern Writers’ Award, Capital Crime’s Crime Book of the Year, the Crime Writers’ Association Dagger in the Library, and the DIVA Wordsmith of the Year.

Mari maintains there was never any doubt that her novels would be set in her adopted homeland. “I just love it here. I hope that comes out in the books. The area is so diverse. You can be in the inner city of Newcastle, you can be up on the coast, you can be in the beautiful countryside. There is so much about the place that, if I live to be 100, I’ll never explore it all. But this area, and Northumberland in particular, offers you so much scope when you’re writing. This diversity of locations provides a constant flow of inspiration and ideas. What writer wouldn’t want that?”

Mari’s books

Mari doesn’t hide behind fictionalising her locations. The newly promoted Frankie Oliver in Her Sister’s Killer lives in an apartment at Coble Quay overlooking Amble marina, while home for her former boss, DCI David Stone, is a cottage at Pauperhaugh near Rothbury.

Oliver and Stone work for Northumbria Police and are stationed at Northern Area Command at the very real Middle Engine Lane just off the A1058 Coast Road in Wallsend – known affectionately as ‘Middle Earth’. Riley’s Fish Shack overlooking King Edward’s Bay in Tynemouth; the Old Low Light Café on North Shields Fish Quay; the Links Art Gallery just off the Promenade in Whitley Bay; the Cumberland Arms in Newcastle’s Ouseburn Valley; and The Old Boathouse Restaurant in Amble all get a mention in the book. 

Landmarks like St Mary’s Lighthouse, the Moto Washington services on the A1, Whitehouse Farm at Morpeth, and Amble RNLI are committed to print, while Matfen, Berwick, Woolsington, Pennywell and Old Hartley also get a name check. Even the street where Frankie Oliver grew up – The Oval in Woolsington – is real.

A sense of place is crucial, Mari explains. It is what makes a story ring true for readers, whether they already live in the area or are coming to it for the first time. She rented an apartment for a week in the block in Amble where the fictional Frankie lives so she could ensure she got the location, feel and geography right. Now Amble is among Mari’s favourite Northumberland places, along with Kielder, which she says: “I absolutely adore.” 

Her diligence has paid off. “Readers have so often said to me, ‘Oh my God, I just live along the road from there, I know that shop, I know that café.’ So, unless there is a really good reason, I will always use the real places. 

“Sometimes I get letters from readers saying ‘you haven’t mentioned us yet. When are you coming to my village?’”

Mari jokes she should perhaps be paid by the tourist board given her championing of the area – albeit a grittier side to North East life than any self-respecting holidaymaker would want to encounter. But she is a firm believer that books sell places. “We already know that from the likes of Ann Cleeves. People come here because they love the books. I’ve had editors who have said, ‘I really must visit Northumberland now.’ My copy editor, who lives in Wales and has been with me right from the start, has said ‘I must get up to Northumberland’.”

Mari came to writing late in life when her 15-year career as a probation officer was cut short following an assault on duty in 1994 that required surgery, leaving her unable to properly use her right hand. She knew she had to get her hand working, so began typing. Her writing grew from that. She did a couple of courses, including a drama development scheme run by the BBC, to learn how to write for television.Sadly, no-one was commissioned from the course, but it was the crime pilot that Mari had worked on that was to eventually become the first Kate Daniels novel.  

Given her route into writing, it is perhaps not surprising that Kate Daniels is now in development with Atlantic Nomad for a possible TV series, and that Stone and Oliver is under option to Buccaneer Media. Should the Kate Daniels novels make it onto the small screen, Mari says she is “more than 99% certain” that the stories will remain based in her beloved Northumberland, although she adds a note of caution. “Of course, you never know once the broadcaster gets a hold if it, but at the minute the books are being followed.”

Does she see Daniels as being a possible replacement for Vera, the final episodes of which were aired over New Year? Mari is at pains to point out that the two characters are completely different (Daniels is gay, hiding her sexuality in a Murder Investigation Team dominated by straight, white men, while Vera is a prickly, blunt, frumpy, middle-aged, old-school copper who is very much in charge of her police crew).

“They are absolutely different,” Mari reiterates. “But they both work in the same area, and that same area has taken Ann Cleeves and the character of Vera a very long way. It would be fantastic if Daniels was to get her TV break, but every broadcaster has several dramas developing at the same time, so it just depends. But if anyone wants to set a new detective series in the North East, then I will be delighted.”

What sets Mari apart from her contemporaries is her unique insight into the genre she has chosen to write. Given she was a probation officer it was perhaps inevitable she would turn to crime to earn a living. She has a background in law, sociology, and psychology and it was, she explains, her job to get inside the minds of criminals. She also used to lecture to Northumbria Police CID on her work with sex offenders in prisons. Plus, as a retired detective inspector on a Murder Investigation Team, her partner Mo also brings a wealth of experience with her, and the couple will brainstorm ideas.

But for the most part, being an author can be a lonely existence. Mari says her writing can consume her and she can find it hard to tear herself away. Even between books, she is still working. There are festivals to attend and planning and research to be done for the next novel. “In my head, I’m always working,” she says. She enjoys meeting up with fellow North East authors. “When I first started [writing] there weren’t that many of us. But we do meet up now and have a meal and a drink, and we go to each other’s launches to support each other, which is a lovely thing to do. We’re a pretty friendly bunch.

 “I think it’s very different for northern writers because we are so far away from London that we can’t on a daily basis drop in and see our editors, so we kind of have each other to rely on and to chat over ideas with. 

“But publishing is London-centric and in a way, because we aren’t there that often, you really need to work hard to keep yourself in their heads. You can’t really equate Ann [Cleeves] with that because Ann is known everywhere now, and rightly so. She has championed the area, she champions libraries, she is a wonderful person and, of course, no-one is going to forget her when she’s had two very long-running series on television with Vera and Shetland, which people have adored and which have travelled all over the world.” Mari pauses. “I’m not there yet; but I’ll get there. Hopefully.” 

And with both DCI Kate Daniels and Oliver and Stone both having caught the attention of TV production companies, it may be happening sooner than she imagines.    

Her Sister’s Killer, published 2025