Incidental Crime by Rachel Ward

Numbers 3 - published this month

There’s a lot of crime in my books, a heck of a lot. My books aren’t crime novels, though. Really, they’re about life and death and love. But along the way I write about car theft, drug dealing, rape, murder, kidnap...okay, now I see why my mum’s disturbed that her daughter writes books like these!

I’ve written three books now – the Numbers trilogy – and crime is there in the background of all of them, as are a whole range of social issues. My characters grow up in crime-filled environments. They are victims and they are criminals. They make stupid choices sometimes, choices that you wouldn’t recommend to anyone. I’ve been criticised in some places for letting my characters make the ‘wrong’ choices, but I want the people in my books to feel real. They’re the sort of people you might know from school, or maybe cross the road to avoid. And real people don’t live lives according to the manual – we do things we regret, make decisions on the hoof, sometimes recognise the right thing to do and do the wrong thing anyway.

The award-winning first in the Numbers trilogy

But books aren’t real life. They’re a skewed version of reality, and as a writer you can shape things they way you want them to be. So in my books I don’t necessarily tie up all the loose ends, but I do try to show that actions have consequences and I try and give a glimmer of hope (okay, you might have to squint to find it). People get hurt, physically and emotionally. Things are messy, but my characters try and deal with them as best they can. And in the end, whatever you’ve done, whatever gets done to you, you try and carry on, and hold on to what’s important. Life and death and love.

The first in Rachel Ward's Numbers trilogy won the Angus Book Award, the Oxfordshire Book Award, the Stockport Schools Book Award, Key Stage 4, the Hounslow Book Award and the Wandsworth Fabulous Book Award 2010. The final book Numbers 3 Infinity, was published on June 6. Find out more about Rachel and her books here.http://www.rachelwardbooks.com/