Number 96 and me: the novelisations - by Anne Harrex
Essay by Anne Harrex, February 2014 Between 1972 and 1974, eight novelisations based on storylines from the TV show, Number 96 , were published by Angus & Robertson under the Arkon paperback imprint. In the end, I wrote seven of these and edited another of them (“The Wayward Husband”) for publication. It all began with an advertisement in the weekend newspaper, “The Review”, formerly “Sunday Review”, “The Sunday Review” and, in its last incarnation, “Nation Review”. The ad may have appeared somewhere else, but this was where I saw it. Writers were wanted for crime and romance novels (I think it was romance) – “to apply send examples of your work to…” (The address gave no other clues.) I’d always been writing and had a drawerful of rejection slips to prove it. As I had two young children, who were now both at school, it looked like the ideal thing for me. In those days there were still postal deliveries on a Saturday morning. It was a Saturday some weeks later when a parc