Publication Day



The Crossbow Stalker, the second book in my Midlands crime series, was published on 6 February 2022 – just a month after its predecessor, Murder On Oxford Lane.

       I first wrote it over three months in 2017. At that time, like the first book, there were originally two male detectives. Then it was suggested I should introduce an Asian female detective and DS Sunita Roy emerged.

            I am indebted to some Asian friends who helped me to get the character right. I’m also indebted to a close friend in Sussex who made various suggestions for making the final chapters of the book more intriguing and more gripping.

            Finally I’m indebted to the wonderful staff at The Book Folks who have been so helpful throughout the publishing process.

Murder On Oxford Lane, my third book, was published in January 2022.

    I’m particularly pleased this novel, which concerns a property tycoon who disappears from a country village, has finally appeared. It’s the first book I ever wrote.

       I sat down and wrote the first draft in the spring of 2016. A year later, I decided the main characters weren’t quite right and I totally rewrote it with fresh characters.

        Two years later, after becoming immersed in other book projects, I returned to it and decided I still didn’t like the principal characters and wrote out the whole manuscript for a third time – until I was finally satisfied with it. Over the years, the opening chapter has appeared in at least four different guises!

        The two main characters I finally settled on are Detective Chief Inspector Gavin Roscoe, an experienced detective and family man, and an Asian character – young Detective Sergeant Sunita Roy who has little experience of policing but has a law degree and is acutely intelligent.

        I have now begun producing a whole series of books featuring these two characters, who work for the fictional Heart of England Police.

I decided to set the story in Warwickshire and Worcestershire because I had some knowledge of the area. I once spent three years in Worcester working as a journalist on the Evening News (now called the Worcester News) and had a great time there. It occurred to me, as a potential crime writer, that there weren’t many novels set in and around the south of Birmingham, and that the area experiences both rural and urban crime.

I was delighted when The Book Folks, a publisher specialising in crime fiction, showed interest in the idea of a series set in the Midlands and signed me up. They have been brilliant at every step of the way towards publication.

So I sincerely hope you like reading Murder On Oxford Lane – and please look out for other titles from me in the future!

The Lazarus Charter, my second novel, was published in March 2020. 

This spy thriller may be a work of fiction. But it’s a book that’s grounded in reality. It’s set in a Britain in which foreign agents seem to be free to swan in and out across borders, committing state-sponsored acts of terrorism as they travel.     

     And it’s set in a Britain in which military targets thousands of miles away can be obliterated by drone weapons operated by the touch of a button at an office desk somewhere in London.

     The Lazarus Charter is my second novel. It features the couple who appeared in my first book, Smile Of The Stowaway -- school teacher Bob Shaw and his wife Anne. That book concerned an immigrant accused of murder. 

    But in this sequel, the pair become immersed in a world of espionage as they struggle to understand how a Government scientist friend has come back to life five weeks after his funeral.

      As the story progresses and the Shaws learn some dangerous secrets, they are forced out of their home and are confronted by sinister forces -- whose identity is, for a while, shrouded in mystery.

     I felt compelled to write the novel partly because of the growing dangers posed in this country by foreign agents who seem to believe they can act without regard for the law.

     Like so many people, I have been outraged at the way these agents have been free to smuggle deadly, unstable poisons into Britain and then use them to eliminate lives.

How The Lazarus Charter came to be written

The main inspiration for writing The Lazarus Charter came to me in February 2019. I was waiting on a London Underground platform as a train came in. One of the passengers stepping out of the compartment vaguely resembled a friend of mine. It would have been an amazing coincidence if it had been my friend, I thought, and, of course, we would have stopped and had a chat.

     But then I wondered what would happen if someone spotted a friend on a train who couldn’t possibly be there because they were no longer alive. In other words, someone whose funeral they had been to.

    This became the starting point for my novel. In my mind, teacher Bob Shaw (who featured in my first book, the crime novel Smile Of The Stowaway) became the man standing on the Underground platform and his close friend Professor Gus Morley became the man on the train.

     I went home and the next day, as soon as I started writing, the rest of the plot simply fell into place. Three months later, in May of last year, the first draft was completed.