Advocate who realised her job had a shelf life

Published on Tuesday 27 March 2007 02:51

WHAT is it about Edinburgh that inspires crime novelists? From Sherlock Holmes to John Rebus and Bob Skinner, the city has spawned some of the most memorable detectives in fiction. Now advocate Gillian Galbraith hopes her new literary creation, Detective Sergeant Alice Rice, can add a feminine touch to this macho world.

Galbraith draws on her experience of 20 years' practice at the Bar for Blood in the Water, a fast-paced yarn where DS Rice is on the trail of a serial killer with a penchant for slitting the throats of counsels, among other victims.

Better known to her fellow advocates as Gillian Gibson, Galbraith began writing the novel when her young daughter was at nursery, and it has already been praised by Alexander McCall Smith - the creator of bestsellers including The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency - who has said "there is not a dull page from start to finish".

While writing fiction might seem like something of a departure for a lawyer so highly trained to deal in hard facts, Galbraith says she has always been interested in writing. Indeed her career could have followed a different path after she graduated with an arts degree from Edinburgh University.

"When I first started looking around for jobs, I worked for DC Thomson because I liked the idea of writing for living," she says. "It wasn't terribly testing: I had to write four problems a week as Sue and Chris, an agony aunt and uncle, and they had to be problems suitable for a 13-year-old. I would always have liked to write, but I sort of drifted into law."

Galbraith was intrigued by the work of the Bar and studied for the Faculty of Advocates exams at her own pace. "I couldn't get a second grant because I'd already had government assistance. It was the quickest way to do it, so I effectively taught myself. After I did it, I had to do the diploma in legal practice, so I did that at Dundee. I realised I wasn't any worse off than anyone else."

She has fond memories of her time working as a devil [an apprentice to a mentor] for Lady Paton and Gordon Jackson, QC.

"It was a pleasure to work for her, I have to say, because she was a nice human being. She is highly competent and had a very mixed practice and was very generous in the work she gave me.

"I then had to do a period of crime as well and I did that with Gordon Jackson, QC, MSP in Glasgow. That was interesting. He was acting for someone who had been associated with Paul Ferris. With Gordon, I did less important things like get his egg roll in the morning and find disco lights for his daughter's party."

Galbraith was called in 1987 and went on to specialise in agriculture, mental health, personal injury and professional negligence cases, which later became a rich source of inspiration for Blood in the Water. Yet she found the long hours working as an advocate eventually took their toll on her health: she had three miscarriages before finally giving birth to her daughter.

"I worked full-time until 1999, when I had a child at the grand old age of 42," she smiles. "I put her in nursery for about two years and then I thought this was ridiculous because, having achieved finally a baby so late in life, I might as well take full advantage.

"My thyroid had conked out, so I couldn't maintain the work level that I had before and I didn't know why I was so tired. My child was at nursery and was getting all sorts of illnesses, so it suddenly seemed silly. I thought I would take time off and see more of her."

After slowing down with her legal work, Galbraith found she had some time on her hands and her thoughts quickly returned to her earlier ambition to write.

While female protagonists are relatively rare creatures in detective novels, Galbraith says she wanted to write the novel drawing on a woman's point of view.

"You inevitably, I think, have a slightly different perspective. If you don't choose to become part of the macho culture, you stand on the edge of it, you observe it, but you have to operate by different means. You have to bring about effective results but that option is never open to you. The things that don't strike your male colleagues may strike you, and vice versa, obviously."

DS Alice Rice is an outsider, not only because of her gender and her university education but because of her striking good looks - she is a six-foot brunette, in sharp contrast to her creator's petite stature.

If anyone would be at pains to point out that their book is not directly inspired by real people or events, it would be a lawyer, and Galbraith is certainly keen to emphasise the book draws on a variety of sources.

"I have discovered that one is completely like a magpie, so you take one little bit from here, one little bit from there and the synthesis bears no resemblance to the component parts," she says. "You use whatever flits into your mind from whatever bit of experience you have."

Yet there are references in the novel that suggest she is less than enchanted with some aspects of life at the Bar. In the first few pages, there is a reference to the faculty's consulting rooms as being "reminiscent of a slightly stuffy gentleman's club forced, unwillingly, into the 21st century". Is that what Galbraith really thinks of the faculty?

"You are trying to get me into trouble," she laughs. "When I first started it was very old-fashioned. It is moving with the times undoubtedly but, as you would expect of a professional Edinburgh institution, the rate of change is obviously quite slow."

While Galbraith is still practising law "at a low level", she now hopes to carve out a career as a full-time writer. "I have done a second book and it's coming out in the autumn so I think I will gradually extract myself from the faculty. That's my plan."

But can Galbraith make a living out of writing compared to the earnings of an advocates? "Everything would suggest no, since you ask," she laughs. "But I am a born optimist. Something will turn up."

• Blood in the Water: An Alice Rice Mystery by Gillian Galbraith is published by Crescent Crime, priced 7.99.