British mystery author Lesley Grant-Adamson, who "gave up her staff job as a feature writer at the Guardian to concentrate full-time on writing murder mysteries, produced 15 novels, many short stories and a variety of nonfiction books," died July 29, the Guardian reported. She was 83. P.D. James wrote of her: "She knows how to create an atmosphere of unease and incipient horror."
Grant-Adamson's first book, Patterns in the Dust (1985), was shortlisted for the Crime Writers' Association's John Creasey award for first crime novels. She drew upon her newspaper background for her first five novels, which feature gossip columnist Rain Morgan solving crimes.
She also wrote two other series, one featuring American con man Jim Rush and the other private detective Laura Flynn. Her stand-alone novels include Threatening Eye (1988), The Dangerous Edge (1993), Lipstick and Lies (1998), and Undertow (1999).
She began her career as a reporter for the Coventry Evening Telegraph, while her boyfriend and future husband, Andrew Grant-Adamson, worked as a journalist in Leamington Spa. She later got a job as a subeditor with the Mid-Herts Advertiser, then as a sub on the features pages of the Guardian, before becoming one of the newspaper's feature writers.
In 1980, she left to write novels. The Guardian noted that her short stories "have been read on BBC Radio, and appeared in magazines and anthologies, and her renown as a crime writer led to commissions from Hodder for books on the writing of crime fiction."
She taught at the Arvon Foundation and at the Ty Newydd writing center in Wales. After fellowships with the Royal Literary Fund, she taught a City University evening class in writing crime fiction and also held posts at Homerton College and Newnham College, at the University of Cambridge (2001-03).
Grant-Adamson's nonfiction works include A Season in Spain (1995, with Andrew Grant-Adamson), Writing Crime and Suspense Fiction (1996), and Teach Yourself Writing Crime Fiction (2003).