The most successful British crime author you’ve never heard of
Angela Marsons is probably the most successful British author you’ve never heard of.
Now her rise to the top of the literary pile appears complete with the BBC planning a television crime drama based on her books.
Marsons, a 55-year-old who lives in the Black Country, has sold millions of digital copies of her novels worldwide, finding rags-to-riches success after traditional publishers and agents sent her countless rejection letters over 25 years.
BBC Studios – which is producing the series with Los Angles-based Bees and Honey Films – is so excited by her writing that it has optioned all her books.
But traditional publishers had not seen the potential of Marsons’s lead character, the formidable policewoman Kim Stone – “a detective hiding dark secrets, who will stop at nothing to protect the innocent”. There was even some objection to the stories’ setting in the Black Country.
After working for 19 years as the security manager of a shopping-centre, Marsons took voluntary redundancy a decade ago to give herself more time to write – only to find herself on the verge of abandoning that dream because she was struggling to pay the mortgage.
Her confidence knocked, she was giving it one last go with digital publishers Bookouture, now an imprint of Hachette.
Fully expecting another rejection letter, she sold possessions to raise funds and had taken on a night-shift security job.
She recalled: “A few days later, I had an email from a commissioning editor saying I’m absolutely loving this, please tell me you’ve got more ideas. I couldn’t respond to that email quickly enough to say there’s another two books written and these are all the other ideas I’ve got. A week later, they’d signed for the first four books.”
Four months later, she had her first Kindle number one bestseller with the first of them, titled Silent Scream, a story about the unearthing of human remains and disturbing secrets at a former childrens home.
It has now sold more than 1.1m copies. On Amazon, it has attracted tens of thousands of five-star reviews. One reader describes it as “a real page-turner”, another calls it a “nail-biter from start to finish”.
In May, Ms Marsons will see the publication of her 20th book in a series that has sold well over 5.5m copies. Titled Guilty Mothers, it is a murder story involving beauty pageants.
Deborah Sathe, creative director for drama at BBC Studios, told The Telegraph that the first adaptation is in development with plans to shoot early next year in the West Midlands: “Angela is passionate about the Black Country, as are we.”
Idiosyncratic characters
She described the books as “so gripping, with a brilliant bunch of idiosyncratic characters”, adding: “There is no crime too dark or frightening for DI Stone, who throws herself into the crime – and often at the criminals, without regard for her own safety in order to facilitate justice. Angela can write a hook like no other, meaning you have to consume chapter after chapter, quite frequently keeping me up past my bedtime – but ideal to convert from book to screen. We can’t wait for a TV audience to be entertained by them.
“It’s not unusual for BBC Studios to pick up non-traditional IP, but what Angela has accomplished via a digital pathway in terms of the size of her fan base is remarkable.”
In her stories, Ms Marsons has drawn on her security experience: “In one of the books, there was a scene about a potential suicide from a high-rise car park and that was a situation I actually dealt with in real life.”
Her books now consistently soar to the number one spot on pre-orders alone. In March, Bookouture released the cover for the latest novel and, like her previous books, it went straight to the top of the charts within hours of the going live for pre-order – this time literally within an hour. The new releases have generally returned to the number one position on publication day.
Ms Marsons’s agent, Lorella Belli, said that the digital sales figures are “staggering”, and with readers as far afield as Japan and South America: “When the BBC starts selling its drama series, it’s not just the UK, they’ll be able to sell it in all the other countries where she’s successful.”
The eBook success led to a print deal, but Ms Marsons did not feel a need for her books to be on supermarket shelves to reach her readers.
Although she has had only fleeting mentions in the UK national press, that is likely to change once the BBC production gets under way.
Ms Belli said of Ms Marsons’s previous rejection: “Everyone turned it down in the early days. But when she started being successful with Bookouture, there was much interest and offers from other publishers wanting to get her to move away from Bookouture, but she’s so loyal. She has always said, ‘no, they weren’t the ones that believed in me’. Not many people would do that.”
Asked about the excitement of seeing her stories brought to life on the BBC screen, Ms Marsons said: “It’s what dreams are made of.”
