 Standing firmly in the 19th Century tradition with its belief in the primacy of the writer's imagination and its consequent freedom to explore human life in all its aspects, Rathbone always refused to be tied to a genre, time or place or character in undertaking this exploration.An ostensible thriller may be just as much a study of relationships, an apparently mainstream novel an investigation of crime, a work of historical fiction a meditation on contemporary issues.In blurring and blending genres in this way for three decades or more, when the book market became obsessed with the typecasting and branding of books and their authors, Rathbone can be seen as having explored and questioned the nature of genre, its scope and limitations.