Looking Ahead: A Suffolk Mystery Cycle for the Seasons

I would like to share a brief glimpse of what lies ahead in my current mystery cycle, which will ultimately be brought together as a five-book box set.

The Leiston Riddle – coming by summer ’26.

This novel continues my interest in communities shaped as much by what they withhold as by what they reveal. It will be a story rooted in place, memory, and the unsettling persistence of unanswered questions hopefully fitting reading for a season traditionally associated with renewal and reckoning.

The Middleton Mystery – completing the five book box set

The Middleton Mystery will round out the cycle and complete the five-book box set. This concluding story is intended to draw together the thematic and narrative strands that have been quietly accumulating across the series – offering resolution without neatness, and answers that arrive with their own costs.

Taken together, these books form a loose but deliberate arc: stories connected by place, by moral pressure, and by the slow accumulation of truth. I will be sharing updates here as each release approaches, but for now, consider this an invitation to look ahead with me – season by season.

Thank you, as always, for reading.

Comments

From revelations to red herrings - what makes a good clue in a crime novel?!

A good clue might seem minor or unrelated at first, but later, when the twist is revealed, it becomes obviously significant . Example : A dog that didn’t bark during a break-in later reveals the intruder was someone known to it. The best clues aren’t hidden, they’re right there, buried among distractions or filtered through character assumptions. T echnique : Use red herrings or multiple interpretations to mask the true meaning. The clue should emerge naturally from character behaviour or choices and not be dropped in arbitrarily. Example : A suspect unconsciously straightening a crooked picture frame may link them to a ransacked room later. Make clues reflect the larger emotional truth or moral question of the story. Example : A discarded child’s toy at the crime scene isn’t just a clue, it hints at the victim’s broken home life. No clue should exist in isolation. It should tie into at least one other clue, forming a web that readers can eventually untangle. What Fee...

Good news for 2026!

Good News Wednesday: I’ve had a really positive message from a client, that another contact has offered to help move a joint project forward. Encouraging momentum on both fronts.

Old houses and atmosphere

The Green Knowe books have such a distinctive atmosphere. The old house sits at the centre of everything, and time there never feels fixed. Instead of dramatic time travel, the past seems to slip quietly into the present. In The Children of Green Knowe , when Tolly stays with his grandmother, he encounters the children who lived there centuries earlier; Toby, Alexander and Linnet: as if the house itself allows different periods to overlap. In The River at Green Knowe , Tolly experiences the house in the Middle Ages in the same gentle way. There’s no explanation or mechanism; the house simply seems to hold those earlier lives within it. That sense of time folding softly back on itself gives the stories their quiet enchantment. Inspired by Hemingford Grey Manor where the author lived, the house feels ancient, calm and full of memory; a place where the garden, river and rooms all carry traces of the past. It’s the kind of atmosphere that stays with readers for decad...

Books and Biscuits

Search This Blog