From Law Firm Opinion Writer To Top Thriller Writer - One Lawyer's Passion Project Career Move

Former Big Firm lawyer and law lecturer Rose Carlyle has morphed from opinion-writing to penning a first-time thriller that has already excited the international publishing world – with a movie deal already signed.

In a Stuff interview, Carlyle, a former lawyer at Kensington Swan and Chapman Tripp before working as a barrister and law lecturer at the College of Law, has written the thriller in a plot developed together with her sister.

Unusually for any first-time novelists, the book immediately excited the local publisher who forwarded it to her colleagues and ultimately had the book – ‘The Girl in the Mirror’ – become the hot property of a publishing bidding war between international publishing houses.

Carlyle, formerly married to barrister Davey Salmon, started her writing career following a difficult time when she had three children under four, including one in intensive care and after the tragic death of a younger brother.

An experienced sailor who had taken a year off with her family in 2013 to sale across the Indian Ocean, she had never particularly planned her career path, but writing was always a passion.

She was awarded first class honours in her creative writing Masters at the University of Auckland and was granted a prestigious mentorship under which she developed and completed the manuscript for ‘The Girl in the Mirror’.

And now, the thriller involving identical twins is set to have her set upon her brand new career path as an author who is successful before the book has hit the bookshelves – which is this week.