'Women are perfectly capable of enjoying no-strings sexual encounters'

Judith Rashleigh of Maestra joins a fascinating group of women of recent fictional origin - Amazing Amy in Gone Girl, Rachel Watson in The Girl on a Train and Ani FaNelli in Luckiest Girl Alive - who are angry, dissembling, sometimes even murderous.

Her creator, LS Hilton, is better known to readers as Lisa Hilton, a writer of historical narratives. The British press is beside itself with excitement at having discovered a gorgeous looking 41-year-old blue stocking who can write on sex, death, and art with equal felicity.

The Oxford-educated Hilton's Judith is amoral, avaricious and also has a very high sex drive, which has led several reviewers to describe her as the tonier version of EL James. Their enthusiasm is understandable - Hilton's previous works include a biography of Queen Elizabeth I, Elizabeth - Renaissance Prince: A Biography, and a biography of Louis XIV's mistress, Athenais: The Life of Louis XIV's Mistress, the Real Queen of France.

What is exciting is that we haven't seen the last of Judith. She will be back again for two tours of duty in Hilton's trilogy and has already been snapped up for the screen.

So what does Hilton think of her heroine who dismembers bodies with as much ease as she conducts herself in threesomes?

Go on, read this.  

1. On women reinventing themselves in fiction

Women are living in a paradoxical culture, which simultaneously pushes individual independence, sexual liberation and fulfilment whilst policing women’s bodies and choices more than ever. Perhaps because we live in such prescriptive, over-scrutinised times, there’s an element of wish-fulfilment about women who can be chameleons, who can try on different personae as it suits them.

2. On her amazing transformation from a writer of serious historical works to this potboiler which has got her so much attention

Surprising, flattering, very scary.

3. The rich research for this book, from art to Europe's underbelly to how to chop a body without getting caught

I did quite a lot of medical research! I also interviewed a member of the British Army about guns, flew to Geneva to interview a banker, dragged a male volunteer around and visited a famous sex club in Paris. I think readers are really smart, they can tell immediately when scenes are flimsily imagined, so it’s important to be diligent about detail.

4. On the Eastern European women who are portrayed in her book as being sort of this floating, global class of high gloss, high class escorts who subsist on two prawns and a slice of watermelon in exchange for the right bags and the right shoes

I think those women are a reality - not the only reality and certainly not a desirable one, but I’ve seen them, I’ve talked to them. And Judith is not judgemental (unlike quite a few book reviewers).

5. On the wonderfully decadent sex in Maestra - something that women writers tend to write only romantically usually

I think books are lagging behind real life in this respect - the success of apps like Tinder shows that (like it or not) women are perfectly capable of enjoying no-strings sexual encounters. Sometimes sex can be beautiful, meaningful and emotional, but it can also be a straightforward physical pleasure, which Judith certainly believes.

6. Are her scholarly friends startled by her more racy style in Maestra?

Not particularly. As historians, we encounter much worse in the realities of the past than any kind of sex or violence I could imagine.

7. What next? More of Judith?

The book is the first part of a trilogy, with number two coming out next spring and the third following that. I hope that Judith will continue to engage and surprise readers - she certainly evolves and changes, and I know where the stories end...

8. And who will play her in the movie version?

The movie rights were bought in seven days by Amy Pascal, her first acquisition as an independent producer. The script, by Erin Cressida Wilson (Secretary, The Girl on the Train) is already finished, so fingers crossed! I won’t have any say in casting, but since there are no physical descriptions of Judith in the book, it will be very interesting to discover who they eventually settle on.