TV's New Thriller Charlotte's Dark Web

The Author Reveals What It’s Like Watching Her Characters Come to Life

- Amy Prebble

Acclaimed author Charlotte Grimshaw is known for her razor-sharp portrayals of contemporary New Zealand society, but it wasn’t until she moved overseas that she tried her hand at writing about her home country.

She cut her teeth as a lawyer, working at commercial law firm Simpson Grierson, where she met her husband, fellow lawyer Paul (55). From there, Charlotte (52) moved in to criminal law, taking part in murder and manslaughter trials before the couple packed up and shifted to London in 1993.

At the time, their son Conrad was an infant and daughter Madeleine arrived soon after, so to write her first novel, Provocation, Charlotte juggled writing with caring for her children in the bustling capital.

“I had always wanted to write fiction the whole time I was practising as a lawyer, which wasn’t all that long,” she says. “I had little kids and I started writing at night, actually out of nostalgia for New Zealand. My first novel was full of these blazing descriptions of the New Zealand sky and weather because I was in winter, in a London flat, and I was feeling really homesick.”

Of course, writing is in Charlotte’s genes. Her father is distinguished New Zealand writer, poet and critic C.K. Stead, and he picked that Charlotte may end up being a novelist.

“He always said to me that of all my siblings, he thought I was the one who could write and I sort of knew that too.