Cornwell says in a 1991 article for The Writer, "I decided to write crime novels not because I liked to read them, but because I had been a crime reporter for The Charlotte Observer." Her early experiences dealing with police, with crime scenes, and with the contexts of violence (as in her series on prostitution) prepared her to take crime in a Southern city as her subject.

Between work in journalism and fiction came biography. Cornwell's book about Ruth Bell Graham (A Time for Remembering: The Ruth Bell Graham Story, 1983) does not present its subject as an appendage of the renowned Reverend Billy, but as a figure of significant interest in her own right. Indeed, the book's original cover jacket neither mentions nor pictures Rev. Billy, giving instead a photo of Ruth Graham.

Thus an unknowing browser could conceivably pick up the book without realizing (until reading...