I used never to read my reviews. Any of them. Now I read a few, if they pop up in front of me when I am glancing through the books pages, or if someone shows me one which they think I ought to know about. Reviews, good or bad, don`t affect me much though personal abuse is never well received.

Sometimes, though, a review gives one pause. One of The Vows of Silence in this week`s TLS - a fair and balanced piece as one always expects from such a source - asks just why I have started to write crime fiction. The reviewer genuinely does not know and it made me think very hard about my reasons, even though it is perfectly OK to put 'money' at the top of the list, as Dr Johnson would have been the first to agree. It did me good to stop and try to work out, now I am on my 5th crime novel, why indeed,money aside, I am writing them. It is good to have the mind focused a bit more sharply than usual.

I was both amused and puzzled, though, by a review from a website new to me, to which a friend sent the link. It is called Reviewing the Evidence (reviewingtheevidence.com) and is one of the numerous sites devoted entirely to crime fiction. Now the reviewer doesn`t like the Serraillers, though she says she races through them and will probably read the next, which seems strange.  But it was not her enjoyment, approval or otherwise which bothered me -if she doesn`t like them now maybe she will come to do so, but if not, then clearly they are not her cup of tea so she might as well spend her time reading something else. No, it was the following.

''Susan Hill has garnered a possibly disproportionate amount of publicity for her series featuring Detective Chief Superintendent Simon Serrailler. My take on her has always been that a 'literary' writer playing in our sandpit is guaranteed lots of attention – despite the fact she's really not producing anything resembling ambitious crime fiction. ''

Set aside the question whether or not I am producing 'anything resembling ambitious crime fiction' because I am not sure what that is - though I am certainly aiming to produce a  slightly different brand.  Even set aside the question as to whether I have or have not 'garnered a disproportionate amount of publicity,' for I am not sure that I have, and in any case what is a proportionate or disproportionate amount of same ?  Who can say ? 

No, the most noteworthy snippet is about my being ' a literary writer playing in our sandpit.' Because it is the perfect example of a strange and not uncommon attitude among practitioners of a number of genres. It happens that some of the very finest crime writers now working - Ruth Rendell, P.D. James, Andrew Taylor - have been extremely welcoming to me and complimentary about the Serrailler series and those are the opinions I value above all because they come from writers who do it far better than I ever will. But it is the same with childrens books - a small number of writers or commentators somehow feel that this is a genre, like the crime novel, that belongs to them and only to them. They guard it jealously, they feel exclusive, and  although newcomers are cautiously welcome - well, they have to be to  help keep the genre alive -  they must know their place and earn their spurs and may only be allowed success or praise or good sales after having waited their turn. It is this attitude which is revealed in that phrase 'playing in our sandpit,' for all the writer tries to be self-mocking by use of the term. Crime fiction is written by crime writers and those who come in from 'outside', as it were, from the realms of literary fiction, or, in the case of childrens books, of 'celebrity are not welcome.

This is the most extraordinary attitude. The crime fiction genre is not 'wholly owned' . Anyone may write anythingand if it is good enough it will find a publisher. It may or may not garner attention, praise, sales, money. The market place will sort all that out. But the idea that this is some kind of club which one may only join by invitation is laughable. Thank goodness it is not a widespread attitude and it is certainly not one shared by  the best in the business.  There used to be a similar attitude among royalty - only those  themselves of royal blood were welcome to marry into royal families. And we know where all that inbreeding led.