Claire Allan: ‘My daughter was diagnosed with autism – it was a lightbulb moment’

From discovering she was on the autism spectrum last summer, to writing about violence against women in the wake of Sarah Everard’s death, Claire Allan speaks candidly to Eimear Ryan

Claire Allan: an "accidental crime writer"

Claire Allan is in the middle of moving house. She apologises for talking to me ‘from a fort of boxes’ in her Derry home, but I’m too busy admiring the dark glamorous wallpaper behind her.

“I wish I could take it with me,” she says – but on the plus side, she’ll have a dedicated writing room in her new house, a few minutes’ drive away.