Authors OnLine -

Around 5.OOam on 28th September 2007, Kate Irving, author of "A Quizzical Corpse" fell peacefully asleep at the Park Hospital, Nottingham, having finally lost her six year battle against cancer. Meg Sutton, pays tribute to her close friend.

Kate was born in Dumfries on 8th July 1946 and spent the first 10 years of her life in Langholm, a small town just over the Scottish border. Aged 10, she moved with her mother to Carlisle as her mother was anxious for her to attend the prestigious Carlisle and County High School for Girls. On leaving school, Kate read History at Bedford College, London where she gained an upper second degree followed by a teaching certificate after which she took up a teaching post at Nottingham Girls High School. After three years in teaching, Kate felt she had made an unwise choice of career and so retrained as a chartered accountant.

Kate spent most of her life as a chartered accountant at the Nottingham branch of Pannel Kerr Foster, generally known as PFK, where she became a consultant specialising in medical accounts. Such was her expertise in this field that she was frequently asked to give lectures on this subject and also to write articles for the financial sections of medical magazines. Kate so enjoyed this side of her work that in 1995 she left PKF and became a full time free lance writer and lecturer on medical accounts.

Kate had a wonderful sense of humour, a brilliant analytical mind and a marvellous command of the English language both in speaking and writing. She also had an extraordinarily retentive memory and astonishing breadth of general knowledge. Her knowledge of vintage films and the lives of 50s and 60s actors and actresses was encyclopaedic. She enjoyed foreign travel and adored New York which she must have visited nearly a dozen times.

She devoured books and loved cryptic crosswords. Each week she took "The Spectator" and some days she would complete its notoriously difficult crossword in less time than it takes most people to complete a gentle Sudoku in one of the tabloids. In 1972 she appeared on Mastermind (special subject "Bismarck") and on a number of other quiz programmes including 15 To 1 (three times), One to win, Pass the Buck, Today's The Day, and One Hundred Per Cent. Ironically, she failed the audition for Countdown where the numbers let her down!! It was this intimate knowledge of the quizzing world which provided the background for her delightful novel "A Quizzical Corpse".

Then in October 2001 disaster struck and in one morning Kate's world was turned upside down. For some months Kate had believed she was suffering from sciatica. However a routine scan to discover the exact site of the trapped nerve instead revealed the awful truth. Kate had inoperable endometrial cancer which was already so far advanced that it had spread into her right buttock and femur and which, a few weeks later, caused a spontaneous fracture of the hip.

That Kate survived six years instead of the six months her consultant had expected, and that she came through three operations to repair her hip plus three full courses of both chemo and radiotherapy, was in part due to her indomitable spirit. Restricted mobility meant she could no longer travel the country giving lectures, nor could she travel abroad. Nevertheless, she was determined to enjoy life and do things she had always wanted to do but previously had never had the time.

She bought and learned to use a laptop. Via internet sites she could keep up with the quizzing world even if she could no longer travel and be part of it - and she could still pit her wits against the quizzers on TV. She also researched her family history.with serendipitous results. Because Kate's parents had separated when she was only a baby and because of tragedy in earlier generations, Kate had believed she had no relations. Her research unearthed an uncle and a number of cousins. All were delighted when she made contact and four cousins came to her funeral, including two from Scotland who had never actually met her face to face.

Kate loved writing and that she had ability was proved by the eagerness with which the medical press snapped up her technical articles. What she had always wanted to do, however, was write a novel. The genre she most enjoyed was the old fashioned detective novel as written by people like Agatha Christie or Dorothy L Sayers. The sort of novel where the murder took place off stage and the victim was referred to simply as "the body"; where there were no grisly details of autopsies; and where the sleuths, whether amateur or professional, followed definite clues to work out who dunnit! Kate firmly believed that a good detective novel should allow the reader to use his/her brain to discover the murderer or at least to kick himself/herself for not having done so when all was revealed at the end. She now set out to construct such a novel herself, setting it against the quizzing background she knew so well and using locations with which she was familiar. She was determined that her book should be upbeat and that the "big C" should not be mentioned. Cancer was something she wanted to forget, not write about. The result was the well structured and at times hilariously funny "A Quizzical Corpse". Whilst writing and marketing the book, Kate's health seemed to improve. It was as though the surge of adrenalin had given her a "high" which boosted her immune system and sent the cancer into remission.

Kate was considering writing a second novel featuring amateur sleuths Molly Massey and Peter Bestwick and setting it against the background of accountancy. She had started making brief preliminary notes under the title: "Murder is Taxing". Sadly, this was not to be. Following the completion of the third course of chemo in April, Kate's health rapidly declined. The previously slow-growing tumours had become aggressive and spread to the brain. The oncology containment options had been exhausted and only palliative care was now possible. Kate knew she was dying and accepted her fate with courage. In the morning of 28th September her suffering came to an end.

Meg Sutton