Miranda Cowley Heller is trading the screen for the page with her debut novel, *The Paper Palace.*

Drama Queen

Over a decade-long career at HBO, Miranda Cowley Heller worked on The Sopranos and The Wire. Her debut novel is as fun as the best TV shows

By Francesca Angelini

You have to hand it to Miranda Cowley Heller. Barely a dramatic life event goes unchecked in her debut novel. Assault, incest, pedophilia, drownings and steamy affairs where underpants are left tucked behind the family bread bin: all are there for the reading in The Paper Palace. None of this was planned. “When I started to write, horrifying things just happened,” Heller, 59, explains over coffee in Fitzrovia in central London.

This compulsion makes sense when you put it together with Heller’s decade-long career at HBO overseeing mini drama series in the Noughties. This was the golden age of television. Sex and violence on-screen had never been better — and it was all down to HBO. Think The Wire, Deadwood, The Sopranos and Six Feet Under.