A FIRST BLOG.

Well this is publication day and my first blog ever...so I will be feeling my way. The first thing to say is that I hope you enjoy the book because I am working on two sequels - well not sequels exactly but two more books in what I hope will become a series.
I hugely enjoy writing them and doing the research to ensure that characters , places, and events are credible and in most ways correct.
My wife and I have travelled quite a bit in France, Italy, Spain and Portugal and some of the places, even small places, find their way into the stories. The restaurants and wines too. That is a large part of the pleasure in writing - it allows the re-living of experiences. I remember for instance a long drive down through France in an old Rover which we didn't really trust, sharing the driving all day, feeling a bit tired by the end and arriving at a marvellous little place - Castagnede - where we had booked in at the small hotel where the restaurant had a Michelin rating. Not the posh rosette but the crossed knife & fork which indicated good cooking at a more modest price. It was damn good and we should have stayed there for longer perhaps but the next day we needed to drive on over the mountains into Northern Spain and our destination : Haro. We would stay there for a week driving around the small villages and sampling at some of the Rioja bodegas...and, funnily enough Haro gets into the book as well. It is an astonishing place - the main square slopes quite steeply and all around we saw the massive nests made by the storks which were flying low over the rooftops. Some of the nests had been made on permanent iron structures - civic nests I called them.
There is much more travelling to be done and many more experiences to be described in what will be ( hopefully ) books two and three where our duo of Met detectives find themselves in Tuscany helping the Policia di Stato di Siena investigate some financial swindles and brutal murders. And, strangely enough, the host detective is also a foodie so there will be a bit more of all that. Tuscany will be there to be enjoyed in all its flavours.

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