Rebecca Tope

Rebecca Tope is a British crime novelist and journalist. She is the author of three murder mystery series, featuring the fictional characters of Den Cooper, a Devon police detective; Drew Slocombe, a former nurse, now an undertaker; Thea Osborne, a house sitter in the Cotswolds; and Persimmon Brown, a florist in the Lake District. Tope is also ghost writer of the novels based on the ITV series Rosemary and Thyme.

Life and career

Rebecca Tope was born on 2 October 1948, in Worcestershire, and has lived in many parts of England since then. She has nearly 40 crime novels in print, published by Allison & Busby. Her two main series are set in the Cotswolds and the Lake District, both featuring amateur female detectives.

She lives on a smallholding in Herefordshire, but has had no livestock for some years. The acres have been returned to the wildlife, which includes a lot of brambles and thistles.

She founded a small press, Praxis Books, in 1992, which has concentrated almost exclusively on reissuing the works of Sabine Baring-Gould (1834–1924). She has also written and published a definitive biography of Baring-Gould.

Tope's hobbies mainly centre around wool, antique auctions and travel.