Not trained in science at all.” Reichs’s eyes wander for a moment before she adds as an afterthought: “I really enjoyed her early books.” The air-conditioning unit humming away in the back of the room isn’t the only thing giving off a slight chill.
The two women, both in their fifties, may share – uncomfortably – the throne in this literary kingdom, but as personalities they could not be more different. Both are directed at readers in the same booming market: forensic crime fiction or, as Reichs corrects me, “science-driven mysteries”. Reichs and Cornwell, often mentioned in the same sentence, are the doyennes of this genre that scarcely existed 20 years ago but which has now spawned shelf after shelf of younger wannabes. There is even, it has been reported, more than a commercial rivalry between them.

“It’s very flattering to be compared,” says Reichs, perched neatly in an armchair in her suite, sipping tea from a china cup. “As long as it’s positive.” Her tone is breezy but she picks her words with precision.”We’ve never met, surprisingly, even though Patsy attended Davidson College at roughly the same time I was a professor there.” That hint of a claim to superior knowledge is then reinforced “She’s not a scientist I am She’s a writer Strictly a writer. The first is for Reichs’s new thriller, Break No Bones (Heinemann, £17.99). The next is one for Patricia Cornwell’s latest offering, At Risk. Both use the same design – a bright burst of light spotlighting an everyday but slightly sinister object, then an encircling ring of darkness to convey a general air of menace The similarities are hardly surprising.

His exit comes hard on the heels of Sue Freestone’s departure from Random’s Hutchinson for Quercus.. In the Underground station, on my way to Claridges, where the bestselling American crime writer Kathy Reichs likes to stay while in London, I spot two posters side by side. Did the chief executive Gail Rebuck, like Government spinners on September 11, think it a good time to bury bad news? Mirchandani is a publisher to his fingertips, who works with authors to get the best from them. His recent successes have included Rachel Seiffert, Michel Houellebecq and Tony Judt’s Postwar. Penguin had trumpeted its acquisition of the Booker-winning Swift, but the paperback of The Light of Day became a casualty of the crisis.