In this feature, we ask our Crime Cymru authors to name six things that influenced their life and shaped them as a writer. This week, Cathy Ace talks to us of careful plotting and chance meetings, of sadness and happiness and of Shakespeare and Christie.

One writer

Agatha Christie: from an author whose traditional mysteries have been likened to Christie’s in many reviews, this choice is unlikely to come as a surprise. I began reading my mother’s Agatha Christie books when I was about ten years old (having graduated from Enid Blyton’s Famous Five and Secret Seven, and Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys…all of which I gobbled up voraciously at Brynhyfryd Library). Hers were the books I read that allowed me to see and enjoy the shape of the traditional whodunnit mystery in my mind: everyone/no one wanted to do it, or everyone/no one could have…