NEWS

Well – do you remember when you signed up for this Newsletter I promised not to overwhelm you with content? Did you think I meant this rarely?

I’ll try to do better, but the urge to write the next book always seems to overwhelm me. Which leads rather neatly to…

Book 7 of the Thomas Berrington Historical Mysteries is due for release on June 13 this year. It is currently on pre-order, and you can see the blurb and cover here on Amazon.<>

After what happened at the end of book 6 I knew I couldn’t keep you waiting too long, but this one was both longer and harder to write than I thought. If you’ve read The Fortunate Dead I expect you know what it’s about: Thomas’s revenge.

I’ve also started work on Book 8, The Message of Blood, which takes Thomas back to Cordoba to solve another murder, but this time the prime suspect is Jorge… Expect to see that book sometime early in 2020.

And if you haven’t seen elsewhere, Book 9, provisionally titled A Tear for the Dead, will also appear in 2020 and brings to a close the first part of the series. But don’t worry. Already I’m planning the next phase of Thomas and Jorge’s adventures, which brings them back to England to accompany Catherine of Aragon for her marriage to Prince Arthur. But that is all in the future.

Thanks for subscribing, and I’ll try not to leave it so long next time.

What I’ve been reading

Well, since the last Newsletter, about 100 books, so I’ll keep this to more recently, and only the ones I highly recommend.

I’ve been catching up on some crime novels of late and the following authors are those I keep coming back to:

First and foremost is John Lawton. He’s not a name well known, and in person he’s notoriously cantankerous, but I think I’ve broken down his barriers now. Lawton writes exquisitely crafted spy thriller set in the 1940s to the 1960s. He claims he refuses to come past 1969, but he’s starting to run out of years to write about. Any of his books are highly recommended.

Others in the mix include Kevin Wignall, Matthew Harffy (great for fans of Bernard Cornwell), and Mason Cross.

And if you need a fix on medieval Spain you should check on Joan Fallon’s The Apothecary, which is a very different take on my approach, but none the worse for that.