Life is murder for Cath Staincliffe... and she wouldn’t have it any other way.

The author this year celebrates 20 years as a published writer and is fast becoming one of the biggest names in crime fiction in the country. And she’s just delivered her 20th manuscript to her publishers, giving Cath undisputed “veteran” status in the crime world. Not only that, but she’s also writing the “unseen” adventures of critically-acclaimed TV ’tecs Scott & Bailey.

Cath was born in Bradford and lived here until she went off to university in Birmingham. After that she settled in Manchester, where she now lives, but remains resolutely Bradfordian and proud of her heritage.

Last week saw the publication of Letters To My Daughter’s Killer, an emotive tale about Ruth Sutton, who begins to write letters to the man in prison who brutally murdered her daughter Lizzie four years earlier. The raw emotions of the grief-stricken mother shine a light on the aftermath of the horribly violent crime and how ordinary people are affected by such events long after justice has been done and the story has disappeared from the headlines.

This is the start of a thoughtful series of unconnected novels from Cath which deal with the more personal fall-out of violent crime. But she’s already earned her spurs in more traditional police-procedural crime writing – both on the page and on the screen.

Cath says: “I actually started off writing science fiction, and one of the first things I wrote was sort of a whodunnit set in a distant solar system. I had a letter from the Women’s Press who said they liked it but it read more like a crime novel, and perhaps I should think of heading in that direction.

“I didn’t really read much crime fiction at the time so I went off to the library and read as much as I could, and pretty soon I was hooked.”

Cath wanted to write a character that reflected her life as a mother, so came up with Sal Kilkenny, a private investigator based in Manchester who juggled single motherhood with prodding the seedy underbelly of the rainy city. Sal’s first outing was 1994’s Looking For Trouble, and that was the springboard for a series of Sal Kilkenny books which won a multitude of fans.

As well as being a celebrated author, Cath also has one foot in TV crime. She wrote a non-Sal Kilkenny novel which she touted around several publishers but which was rejected. Then, on a whim, she sent it to Granada TV as the basis for a TV series.

She says: “I thought that if they liked the idea they might take it on and get a scriptwriter to do it – I had no idea at all about writing for telly. But Granada loved the concept and brought me in and asked me if I’d write the script.”

That script turned into the hugely successful ITVseries Blue Murder, starring Caroline Quentin as the detective whose domestic life as a single mother of four was as much pressure as solving murders.

Cath says: “Writing for TV was a steep learning curve and it was really enjoyable to see your ideas from the page brought to life by the cast and crew. It’s very different to writing a novel though, and there’s lots and lots of rewriting involved as part of the process.”

Blue Murder came to an end, with Cath writing several episodes of the series, and she returned to her first love of novels – but TV wasn’t about to let her go that easily. Because of the contacts she’d made at Granada she was in pole position when it came to finding an author to take the hugely-successful Scott & Bailey brand to the printed page.

Scott & Bailey, starring Lesley Sharp and Suranne Jones as two Manchester CID officers, is about to begin production on its fourth series. Jones’s Rachel Bailey is a tough cookie with a car-crash personal life, while Janet Scott combines her job with looking after a family – just the sort of dynamic that Cath has become adept at.

She says: “The show obviously features really strong women, with the two leads as well as Amelia Bullmore as their boss. It was great to be asked to write novels based on the series – these aren’t novelisations of the shows themselves, but other stories starring the characters.”

Cath’s second Scott & Bailey novel, Bleed Like Me, was published by Bantam Press last month, which – when coupled with Letters To My Daughter’s Killer, out now from Constable and Robinson, makes it a very Cath Staincliffe spring.

With such a back-catalogue and a busy 2014, Cath could perhaps be forgiven for taking it easy. But she’s already working on the next book, and says: “The buzz of having a book coming out is incredible and I don’t think I’ll ever want to stop writing!”