‘An Act of Detection’ by Charlie Cochrane

Published by Williams and Whiting,
22 July 2019.
ISBN: 978-1-91258231-0

Although the Second World War has been over for five years, post-War London in 1950 is still a grey, dismal place that is in need of popular, attractive actors such as Toby Bowe and Alasdair Hamilton to lighten the public’s mood. Along with their co-star, Fiona Marsden, Toby and Alasdair are adored cinema stars. Their private lives provide entertainment in the gossip columns of newspapers and magazines, just as their acting, in many adventurous and heroic roles, delights cinema goers. Fortunately, the press and public are occupied with linking Toby and Alasdair with Fiona or the other attractive young women they are seen around with, and have no inkling that they are romantically involved with each other. The two actors take care to camouflage their love for each other, aware that homosexuality is illegal and their star status will not protect them. Indeed if their fans knew everything about them most of them would turn on their former idols.

An Act of Detection is divided into two adventures. The first, The Case of the Overprotective Ass, chronicles Toby and Alasdair’s first foray into detection when Actor Manager Johnny Fisher asks them to track down his secretary, Robin Pierce, who has disappeared. As Toby and Alasdair delve into the secrets of Pierce’s life, they discover how much fun detection can be, but when their recent on screen depiction of Holmes and Watson provokes threatening anonymous letters, they find themselves with two cases to investigate, and the chilling prospect that their own lives may be in danger.

At the conclusion of their first case, Toby and Alasdair had protested that their detective days were behind them, but then they are presented with The Case of the Undesirable Actor, in which a new co-star, George Howells, is murdered. The two friends had not known Howells particularly well, and had not liked what they did know, for Howells had been an unpleasant, violent man, but when the owner of their film studios asks them to help, they agree to investigate. Soon the actor sleuths find themselves with a remarkable array of suspects and their investigation leads to a final scene that is as melodramatic as any of their films.

Charlie Cochrane already has two series featuring male lovers investigating crimes, but in her contemporary series the couple can live together openly and one of the pair is a police detective. This new series featuring Toby and Alasdair has a lot in common with the author’s Cambridge Fellows series, but the Edwardian series has a darker more serious tone, partly because it is shadowed by the prospect of the Great War and also because the early academic world is, by its nature, less frivolous than the world of cinema. An Act of Detection does reference the Second World War, in which both Toby, Alasdair and their co-star, Fiona, served, and this is used skilfully to illustrate a stronger, more serious side to their characters. Toby and Alasdair still have to keep their relationship a secret, and discovery would result in public censure, loss of their careers and imprisonment. It is not easy to keep their private lives hidden when they lead such high-profile lives. They are often seen with beautiful young starlets at social events, but, despite Media speculation, none of these young ladies make it into their bedrooms. An Act of Detection is an amusing, delightful novel, with a fascinating setting and two appealing protagonists. I thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys their crime fiction light, lively and nostalgic, with a good spice of humour.
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Reviewer: Carol Westron

Charlie Cochrane couldn't be trusted to do any of her jobs of choice—like managing a rugby team— so she writes. Her favourite genre is gay fiction, predominantly historical romances/mysteries.  A member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, and International Thriller Writers Inc, Charlie's Cambridge Fellows Series, set in Edwardian England, was instrumental in her being named Author of the Year 2009 by the review site Speak Its Name.  

http://www.charliecochrane.co.uk

Carol Westron is a successful short story writer and a Creative Writing teacher.  She is the moderator for the cosy/historical crime panel, The Deadly Dames.  Her crime novels are set both in contemporary and Victorian times.  The Terminal Velocity of Cats the first in her Scene of Crimes novels, was published July 2013. Carol recently gave an interview to Mystery People. To read the interview click on the link below.

https://promotingcrime.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/carol-westron.html

www.carolwestron.com

http://carolwestron.blogspot.co.uk/

To read a review of Carol latest book Strangers and Angels click on the title.

‘Safe Houses’ by Dan Fesperman

Published by Head of Zeus Ltd,
11 July 2019.
ISBN 978-1-78854788-8 (PB)

In Safe Houses the narrative alternates between two sets of characters, two main locations and two time zones. Towards the end of the cold war in 1979 Helen Abell is a lowly employee who manages four safe houses for the West Berlin station of the CIA.  Helen is only twenty-three and longs for the excitement of a field officer’s job though there is little chance of this given the prevailing sexist attitudes of that era. Thirty-five years later, in the rural village of Poston on the eastern shore of Maryland USA, we meet Helen’s daughter Anna Shoat.  She is nearly thirty, has no connections with espionage of any sort, and had no idea that her mother had ever been a spy.

Anna hasn’t lived in Maryland since she went to college and has only returned because her brother, Willard, who is in his twenties but has the mental age of a young child, has shot his mother Helen and his father in cold blood.  Anna needs to understand why her brother would have done such a thing. He loved his parents and was loved by them.  She engages the help of Henry Mattick, a newcomer to Poston whose job was to keep a watch on visitors to the Shoat’s house.  But why was he there and whom was he reporting back to?

The answers to Anna’s and Henry’s questions appear to be rooted in Helen’s former work in Berlin. On an unscheduled visit to one of her safe houses Helen had inadvertently witnessed two events of which she shouldn’t have had any knowledge.  She overheard and recorded an incomprehensible, coded meeting between a field officer and a potential agent, and then she witnessed another officer, “Robert” trying to rape a local German agent.  Helen seeks help from her fifty-five years old lover, Clark Baucom, who is an experienced CIA field officer.  He advises her to destroy the tapes and to forget about reporting “Robert” for attempting to rape the young German agent.

Helen is having none of it.  Incensed by the cavalier attitude of male officers towards females, Helen goes to Paris to gather evidence against the rapist in their midst and, with the help of two other girls, she collects the evidence she needs. But “Robert” is more useful to the CIA and other powerful security lobbies than is Helen, so senior management side with him. The net result of Helen’s efforts was that she was fired from the CIA and sent home.

Henry and Anna make good headway unraveling the significance of what Helen had discovered in 1979 though they are still hampered by “Robert” AKA Kevin Gilley, who now occupies a powerful position in American Politics.  As in all spy books, one’s friends are not necessarily whom they appear to be. This includes Henry Mattick. The developing relationship between Anna and Henry comes rapidly unstuck when he confides that he has another paymaster beside herself.

Fesperman has done his research thoroughly for the background to Safe Houses. The locations are meticulously described, as are the difficulties and attitudes experienced by female operatives at the hands of their bosses – one aspiring young lady only gets to become a field agent after disingenuously confiding to her boss that she has been “fixed” like a cat or a dog, so there is no danger of her becoming pregnant on the job!  Despite its length – 613 pages - I found it a very enjoyable read with plenty to worry and hope about and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good spy story with a hint of romance thrown in.

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Reviewer Angela Crowther

Dan Fesperman

https://www.danfesperman.com

Angela Crowther is a retired scientist.  She has published many scientific papers but, as yet, no crime fiction.  In her spare time Angela belongs to a Handbell Ringing group, goes country dancing and enjoys listening to music, particularly the operas of Verdi and Wagner.

‘The Madness Locker’ by E. J. Russell

Published by Troubador Publishing Ltd,

28 May 2019.
ISBN 978-1789018-509 (PB)

This is historical crime novel of high quality.  The story is told from multiple points of view which illuminate the 1940s in Germany for Jews and ordinary Germans.   The lives of several young people are particularly featured.  This historical background is interwoven with events in Australia in 2006.  It can take a while to pick up on the names as references to them alternate, but it all comes together as you progress.

The author tells us that he had been inspired by a true crime in Sydney, Australia in 2006 when the body of a seventy-year-old widow was discovered in wheelie bin and police were unable to identify a motive or a suspect.  He is attempting, therefore, to offer a fictional explanation of this by assuming that such a crime was probably rooted in the past.  He sees the likelihood of actions of the past leading to revenge.

The bulk of the book concerns events in Germany as Hitler’s Nazis have taken full control.  The fate of ten-year-old Ruth who is Jewish is somehow subverted as a non-Jewish girl is put on the transport in her place.   The experiences of being a German officer, of training as a doctor in the Netherlands, of living in hiding and of attempting to survive in the concentration camps are vividly portrayed.

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Reviewer: Jennifer S. Palmer

This is a first book.

E.J. Russell holds a Masters of Creative Writing degree from the University of Sydney and is currently undertaking a PhD in the same discipline. His debut The Madness Locker is based on a true crime story which was never solved.

Jennifer Palmer Throughout my reading life crime fiction has been a constant interest; I really enjoyed my 15 years as an expatriate in the Far East, the Netherlands & the USA but occasionally the solace of closing my door to the outside world and sitting reading was highly therapeutic. I now lecture to adults on historical topics including Famous Historical Mysteries. 

‘Simply Dead’ by Eleanor Kuhns

Published by Severn House,
30 April 2019.
ISBN: 978-0-727 -8884-6 (HB)

Researching a historical novel is a straightforward matter of looking at books, documents and the internet. Making it feel right is a whole different skill, and it's a skill Eleanor Kuhns has in bucketloads. 

North-eastern America in the late 18^th century is almost an alien world: one-roomed houses with dirt floors, three-mile walks to school for the children, values and customs far removed from the more relaxed approach we now adopt. Life was hard for ordinary people trying to scrape a living off the land. All this and more comes richly to life as background for Kuhns's Will Rees series.

Rees and his family live close to a Shaker community which is possibly the most dangerous of its kind in the country. Not only does the murder at the centre of the narrative take place there; mention is also made of murders in previous volumes in the series, which Rees has been involved in solving.

Not that he is a lawman; that role falls to Constable Rouge, who also runs the local bar and restaurant. But Rouge is something of a bull in a china shop; Rees usually thinks before he jumps. He is called in to help search for Hortense, a young midwife who has apparently been abducted en route home from delivering a baby; he finds her, hurt and distressed, and it soon becomes apparent that she isn't telling the whole truth about what happened to her.

Hortense takes refuge in the Shaker community, and shortly afterwards another young woman is found strangled, possibly in mistake for Hortense. Rees now has two mysteries to solve, and as if that wasn't enough, his eldest adopted daughter is attacked. 

That rich background really comes into its own as Rees travels up the nearby mountain and into the forest in bitter winter weather in search of answers. There are wolves, a wise woman, and several families made aggressive by isolation and the conditions they live in, and Kuhns has the knack of drawing the reader in to feel part of the story.

The sharply drawn, well-rounded characters add to the sense of involvement: Rees himself, sometimes sensitive, sometimes clumsy, always well meaning; Lydia, his intelligent, self-possessed wife; Jerusha, his headstrong daughter; clumsy Rouge; emotional Bernadette, Hortense's mother, Pearl the feisty teenage Shaker: they all come to life, as do the gentler members of the community who conceal iron strength under a calm exterior.

I was left feeling I'd visited late 18^th century Maine, not just read about it. More than that – I wanted to go back for more, to get to know these people better, and explore their world further. It all felt right.
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Reviewer: Lynne Patrick

Eleanor Khuns is the 2011 winner of the Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel competition. She lives in New York, and received her master’s in Library Science from Columbia University. She is currently the Assistant Director at the Goshen Public Library in Orange Country, New York.
  

Lynne Patrick has been a writer ever since she could pick up a pen, and has enjoyed success with short stories, reviews and feature journalism, but never, alas, with a novel. She crossed to the dark side to become a publisher for a few years, and is proud to have launched several careers which are now burgeoning. She lives on the edge of rural Derbyshire in a house groaning with books, about half of them crime fiction.

‘Only a Mother’ by Elisabeth Carpenter

Published by Orion,
27 September 2018.
ISBN: 978-1-4091-8147-7 (PB)
Erica Wright has been buffeted by life's slings and arrows since childhood: stifled by an over-protective mother, abandoned while pregnant by her married lover, betrayed by her best friend and made to feel a pariah in the neighbourhood. But she has always believed in her son Craig, despite what everyone else, including the courts, thought of him. Now Craig is about to be released on parole after serving seventeen years of a life sentence; he was convicted of murdering his girlfriend and is still suspected of killing another girl though the police couldn't prove it.

After his release, Craig turns out to be his own worst enemy, staying out overnight, consorting with his shady friends, getting involved with drugs. And then another girl goes missing and the police are on the warpath...
Elisabeth Carpenter's two previous novels revealed a talent for getting under the skin of damaged souls like Erica: a skill which ramps up to a high level in Only a Mother. Consequently, it's not an easy book to read; it's so well done that I had to keep putting it down and taking a few deep breaths. 

Carpenter takes pity on the reader to some extent, and interleaves Erica's heartrending first-person chapters with sections seen through the perspective of Luke, a local paper journalist who is both keen to make a name for himself and sensitive to the feelings of his subjects. Between them, Luke and Erica slowly uncover the truth about the small, ambiguous details which resulted in Craig's conviction, and eventually put together what really happened seventeen years ago.

The plot unfolds at a steady pace, and justice triumphs at the end; but this is very much a novel that focuses on the characters: their feelings and motivations, and what has happened to make them the way they are. It's hard to know how anyone would react to the sad and challenging circumstances Erica has found herself in, but Elisabeth Carpenter brings her to life in a way that makes us believe this is how it could be. Once again, she hardly puts a foot wrong, and presents a world that wrenches at the emotions as well as a storyline with enough twists, turns and dramatic moments to hold the attention of the most avid mystery reader. 

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Reviewer: Lynne Patrick

Elisabeth Carpenter lives in Preston with her family. She completed a BA in English Literature and Language with the Open University in 2008. Elisabeth was awarded a Northern Writers’ New Fiction award and was longlisted for Yeovil Literary Prize (2015 and 2016) and the MsLexia Women’s Novel award (2015). She loves living in the north of England and sets most of her stories in the area, including the novel she is writing at the moment. She currently works as a book keeper.

https://elisabethcarpenter.co.uk 

Lynne Patrick has been a writer ever since she could pick up a pen, and has enjoyed success with short stories, reviews and feature journalism, but never, alas, with a novel. She crossed to the dark side to become a publisher for a few years, and is proud to have launched several careers which are now burgeoning. She lives on the edge of rural Derbyshire in a house groaning with books, about half of them crime fiction.

St Hilda’s Crime Fiction Weekend 2019

By Radmila May 

It is salutary for me to reflect that not only is this conference series well into its third decade since being one of the first, if not the first, of such conferences to be held in the U.K. but that I have been to all but one. One of the great attractions is, of course, the setting on the banks of the tree-fringed River Cherwell. Another is the pleasure of meeting old friends and acquaintances in such a lovely setting, not to mention the excellent food and drink (least said about the earliest years on that score the better; things are very different now).  But the greatest attraction of all is the scope of the topics under discussion. In this it differs from other Crime Fiction conferences in that a single over-arching concept forms the framework for the discussions which take place between panellists under the benign yet firm chairmanship of crime-writer Natasha Cooper.

This year the concept was Gamechangers: Writers Who Have Transformed the Genre. It was introduced with a few light-hearted words by Val McDermid, herself a St Hilda’s alumna and now a Grande Dame (indeed The Grande Dame) of crime writing, over Friday evening dinner with the title of ‘From Victims, Vixens and Vamps to Valkyries, Vanquishers and Victors’ which aptly describes how the second wave of feminism in crime fiction reversed the formerly restrictive role of women in hard-boiled crime writing. Sadly, Val told us that she will be retiring from the committee of the St Hilda’s Crime and Mystery Conference.

Andrew Taylor

We began on Saturday morning with two writers who can fairly be said to have been ground-breakers not just because they were women but because they elevated what had been a fairly run-of-the-mill style of writing into something rather more literary and bolder in theme. They were Josephine Tey and Patricia Highsmith. The multi-award winning Andrew Taylor, in my view one of the best of modern crime writers, wrote of the matchless subtlety and ambivalence in the characters Tey depicted in her novels and of her interest in their nature rather than intricacies of plot. Sarah Hillary, whose first novel, Under Someone Else’s Skin, won a Theakston’s Old Peculier Award and has since published five more, spoke of how Highsmith was not afraid to transgress boundaries as she did so memorably in her Ripley novels and in Strangers on a Train.

Graeme Macrae Burnet
and Lin Anderson

The next speakers were Nicholas Utechin and Graeme Macrae Burnet.  Nicholas is an Honorary Member of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London and former editor of The Sherlock Holmes Journal and a considerable fount of wisdom on all matters Holmesian. He told us the Holmes novels were not greatly successful but when the short stories were published in The Strand Magazine, they immediately became immensely successful and Holmes never looked back although Doyle became heartily tired of his creation and tried to polish him off at least once. He singled out for praise Doyle’s use of short, pithy phrases particularly noticeable at a time when writing tended towards the verbose. Graeme’s book, His Bloody Project, about a brutal triple murder in the Scottish Highlands in 1869, was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 2016. But he also has written several French-set detective novels hence his interest in the immensely prolific Simenon and of how that author, always beginning with strong and evocative openings, chose to depict how easily the apparently everyday and banal can become sensational and shocking. 

The afternoon sessions opened on quite a different subject: the contribution to crime-solving in real life by forensic science. Lin Anderson whose forensic scientist Dr Rhona Macleod has featured in 13 novels. Lin emphasised the over-riding importance of character in fiction but also emphasised how swiftly forensic scientific techniques develop and how necessary it is for real-life investigators and writers alike to keep up to date. Forensic science professor Niamh Nic Daeid then gave a really fascinating talk on developments in forensic science in history and the present day, ranging from firearms to fingerprints to handwriting right up to DNA and the publication this year by the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee of their report, Forensic Science: A Blueprint for Change. She stressed how important it is for judges and lawyers involved in criminal trials to understand forensic scientific evidence. And all crime writers tackling modern day crime scenarios should endeavour to get familiar with the subject.

Later that afternoon Mick Herron (see photo left) spoke on Reginald Hill and Will Dean (see photo right) on Peter Hoeg’s Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow. Mick described how Hill, although using the tried-and-tested ever-popular formula of senior police detective plus junior sidekick in his police procedurals, liked to include literary allusions such as reference to Homer’s Iliad in his writing not just in those but in the various others he wrote in other genres within the crime fiction canon.Will who lives in Northern Sweden in an isolated site, is much influenced by his environment and also by his awareness of post-colonial Legacy. Smilla is herself part-Danish and part-Inuit and the plot concerns her attempts to show that a small boy who fell from a snow-covered roof did not fall but was pushed. These attempts lead back into Denmark’s highly questionable colonial past, and the story’s post-literary status is apparently illustrated by Smilla’s failure to bring her quest to a conclusion

We gathered at 7,45 pm for drinks on the lawn, which was followed by a splendid dinner in honour of P.D.James with a highly teasing who-dunnit written by and ‘mistress-minded’ by Natasha Cooper. 

(Photo left is of Priscilla Masters, Gaynor Coules, Chrissie Poulson and Kate Ellis).  

On Sunday morning the Guest of Honour Lecture was delivered by Denise Mina who was on sparkling form. Denise’s first novels were the Garnethill trilogy set in her native Glasgow; since then have followed several stand-alones and two more series, at least one book based on real-life crimes, and even comic collections and graphic novels. She has been described as a mixture of rage and humour; I must say it was the humour and the zest for life which came across rather than the anger. But she did say that all crime writing is political by its nature and is about social issues. Reader and writer should be drawn into the story by the central character and his/her story arc.

The final talks were given by the duo who write as Nicci French and by Mary Paulson-Ellis on the acclaimed author Kate Atkinson whose Jackson Brodie novels are both exciting and entertaining and of high literary standing The Nicci French novels are in the psychological genre, which began with The Memory Game. I am afraid I missed both speakers; looking back something I regret.

However, I am looking forward to the 2020 St Hilda’s Conference and am wondering what changes there will be. My own preference would be for more emphasis on Oxford writers, of the past, not just Dorothy Sayers and Colin Dexter but others such as Michael Innes and Edmund Campion, and of the present. It was good that Oxford resident Mick Herron has appeared two years running, but are there no others? Either from Oxford itself or from the  surrounding area?

Photographs by Lizzie Sirett
Dates for next year 14-16 August 2020 

‘Secrets in the Cotswolds’ by Rebecca Tope

Published by Allison & Busby
22 August 2019.
ISBN: 978-0-74902433-8 (HB).

Secrets in the Cotswolds is the 17th book in the series featuring house-sitter Thea Osbourne, now Thea Slocombe since her marriage to undertaker Drew Slocombe.* 

Since her marriage Thea has now abandoned her house-sitting career but finds herself missing it. With Drew working Thea is struggling to keep her stepchildren occupied during the long summer break, so, when Detective Superintendent Sonia Gladwin, whom Thea has come to regard as a friend over the years that Thea has stumbled upon dead bodies in the leafy Cotswolds villages she house-sits, asks if she could help out her friend who needs someone to oversee the building work she is having done to a house in the village of Barnsley, Thea jumps at the chance, even though it will mean leaving her beloved spaniel Hepzie behind, as the house owner has vetoed the presence of a dog owing to the building work.

Now a one car family, Thea finds herself on her first morning short on food and transport. She sets out on foot to see what the village has to offer. After scrambling over several stiles, She decides that with nothing to see but wildflowers, brambles and bracken ahead of her she will turn for home. But suddenly out of the dense undergrowth crawls a woman, of around her own age.  She is in disarray, clearly frightened and not totally coherent.  Although, possibly Chinese, she speaks perfect English. She says her name is Grace and asks Thea to help her.  Despite her misgivings, Thea offers her sanctuary for the night, only to find her dead the next morning. 

The local police only have one suspect and that is Thea. With her friend Sonia busy with a huge investigation into the trafficking of wild animals Theo has no help forthcoming from that direction.  Her telephone calls home to Drew offer no solution.  He sounds to her ears ‘odd’. But he and the children say everything is fine.  So, Thea is on her own. With no car and knowing no one in the village, and missing her companion Hepzie, Thea marshals what assets she has. Well, the house maybe in a state, but it does have wi-fi.

And so, Thea sets out to discover what she can about Grace. As she investigates the woman's background, she discovers many anomalies that do not tally with the things Grace told her.  And maybe someone in the village knows something, so Thea sets out to find out what?  Of course, if someone does have something to hide maybe Thea should be careful. After all, if Grace is dead then clearly whatever the secret is it’s worth killing for, and it is said, when you have killed once the second time is easy.  A good village mystery. I do so enjoy them. Recommended.

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Reviewer: Lizzie Sirett

*There are four books in the series featuring undertaker Drew Slocombe. Dark Undertakings (1999) Grave Concerns (2000), The Sting of Death (2002) and A Market for Murder (2003)

Rebecca Tope is the author of four popular murder mystery series, featuring Den Cooper, Devon police detective, Drew Slocombe, Undertaker, Thea Osborne, house sitter in the Cotswolds, and more recently Persimmon (Simmy) Brown, a florist. Rebecca grew up on farms, first in Cheshire then in Devon, and now lives in rural Herefordshire on a smallholding situated close to the beautiful Black Mountains. Besides "ghost writer" of the novels based on the ITV series Rosemary and Thyme. Rebecca is also the proprietor of a small press - Praxis Books. This was established in 1992

www.rebeccatope.com

‘The Stolen Boys’ by Joy Ellis

Published by Joffre Books,
11 October 2018.  

ISBN 978-1-78931-042-9 (PB)

This is an excellent police procedural.  Set in the Fens it builds up contrasting tales of police and potential criminals so that the reader’s interest is fully engaged.  DI Jackman and D S Marie Evans head a tightly knit team of detectives who find themselves investigating the thefts of Hybird X clothing for young men.  This eminently valuable street wear is worth thousands and is being stolen literally off the backs of those wearing it.  When a young man dies during a robbery and another young man’s body is found then the team have a lot of investigating to do.

The characters here really engage one in the investigation.  Joy cleverly holds together a complex tale.  Drake is the shadowy villain behind various thieving activities and there are hints of more nefarious activity on the marshes - possibly smuggling?   Those on both sides of the law are fully rounded characters about whom the reader really cares.  The book is one of a series, but it is possible to enjoy this volume without having read its predecessors.   One particular theme is referenced as running through the whole series and likely to continue into future books.

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Reviewer: Jennifer S. Palmer 

Joy Ellis has several series set in the Fens - this is Book 5 of the Jackson & Evans series while the Nikki Galena series has reached book 9.  She has also written several standalones.

Joy Ellis was born in Kent but spent most of her working life in London and Surrey. She was an apprentice florist to Constance Spry Ltd, a prestigious Mayfair shop that throughout the Sixties and Seventies teemed with both royalty and ‘real’ celebrities. She swore that one day she would have a shop of her own. It took until the early Eighties, but she did it. Sadly the recession wiped it out, and she embarked on a series of weird and wonderful jobs; the last one being a bookshop manager Joy now lives in a village in the Lincolnshire Fens with her partner, Jacqueline. She had been writing mysteries for years but never had the time to take it seriously. Now as her partner is a highly decorated retired police officer; her choice of genre was suddenly clear. She has set her crime thrillers in the misty fens.

www.joyellis.info

Jennifer Palmer Throughout my reading life crime fiction has been a constant interest; I really enjoyed my 15 years as an expatriate in the Far East, the Netherlands & the USA but occasionally the solace of closing my door to the outside world and sitting reading was highly therapeutic. I now lecture to adults on historical topics including Famous Historical Mysteries.