Elizabeth Palmer is wearing a fine blue suit, her burnished hair is shaped in a bob and her voice is cut-glass. Somehow it is a surprise that her current novel's success was partly inspired by the advice of a clairvoyant. Palmer, who has recently released her fifth novel, The Golden Rule, had a successful career as a freelance book designer until one morning she woke up and decided that she just couldn't design one more coffee-table book.

She thought she'd like to write a novel and her husband said "have a bash" but the two years it took to complete her The Stainless Angel, would have been daunting were it not for the clairvoyant.

"I have two brilliant clairvoyants in London, where I lived until two years ago, and I visit them every now and then. Anyway, they both independently said that I would write a book and it would do very well, which was really a boost at the time."

Random House publishers agreed with the psychics and The Stainless Angel did indeed do well and was followed by four more novels. Originally based in London, Palmer moved to Dublin two years ago after her husband David Palmer was made managing director of the Independent Newspaper group. They have kept on their Sussex house for their three children; Marine, who is taking a year out after school and two boys who are in university.

"I think they approve of me writing," says Elizabeth, "although Marine recently asked whether she was in the latest book. To which her friend, Astor, who had read it, cried, `Of course you are'. Not the right answer, I'm afraid."

When she asked one of her sons how he liked her first book he heaved a large sigh and said "You write the way you speak, Mummy".

Elizabeth is not sure if this was meant as a compliment but her young son probably put his finger on the strength in her books; their fresh narrative voice. More intelligent than the sex-and-shopping novel, they nonetheless share a similar appeal to that oeuvre - with a dash of Alexander Pope and Evelyn Waugh added. "I was an only child and read a huge amount, the classics and everything, so really I had nothing to do in English class by the time I arrived in secondary school. It has formed an undercurrent to my writing."

Comparisons to Joanna Trollope and Mary Wesley are inevitable but Palmer doesn't entirely subscribe to this view herself.

"I think Trollope's voice, in particular, is much more comfortable than mine; my books are really quite sharp. They're about how people socially interact within a thin veneer of civilisation - and it is very thin sometimes. Of course at times it's so thin it isn't there at all and that's when things really get interesting."

She laughs wickedly which prompts me to suggest that she is fond of her "bad" characters, such as Drusilla Causton, the scaldingly immoral wife of one of the newspaper proprietors in The Golden Rule and the mistress of the other.

"Well my publishers are always telling me I have to have likeable figures in the books but really I have no time for these soupy characters who are absolutely perfect. I think we all have huge flaws, don't you?"

Given that Palmer's characters are no angels, it would seem she must run into trouble with her books which are closely observed studies of a society very similar to that which Palmer inhabits herself. The Golden Rule dwells lovingly on the feuds and machinations of two newspaper moguls. Palmer herself once worked for the Financial Times which is where she met her husband. She doesn't tnink any novelist could put her hand on her heart and say that all her writing isn't autobiographical. "That said, neither of my two proprietors is my husband though he does appear in my last book, Flowering Judas, if you look very closely. With that book I did get into a bit of trouble as certain people read it and thought they recognised themselves. More I will not say."

She smiles wryly but agrees that the newspaper world lends itself well to her style of writing as it's a world of constant movement where egos clash regularly. "I love the way people interact socially and sexually. All that cut and thrust for position; it's fascinating to watch."

Palmer is now at work on a sixth book, which her publishers hope will be a little different to her previous novels. "They want it to have more depth. I think my other books have depth but I think what they mean is popular depth with a wider canvas so we can break into the big time."

It is not the first time Elizabeth Palmer mentions breaking into the big time and when I ask her if selling a lot of books is important to her she admits with appealing frankness that it is. "I feel I've got something to say. I love what I do and in a funny kind of way I want to pass on the way I see things. I'm not sure how well the books sell in Ireland as compared to Britain but I can't help feeling they'd be rather popular. Dublin society is often rather acerbic beneath the surface - just like my books."

The Golden Rule is published by Century at £15.99 hardback and £9.99 paperback.