Category Archives: Books

A Snare of Deceit is out!

12 Friday Jul 2024

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Tom Walsingham is back! Book Five of his adventures, A Snare of Deceit, is out today with Sapere Books.

It’s New Year’s Day, and Queen Elizabeth’s court is celebrating: a banquet, dancing, music, a troupe of tumblers… Not that the atmosphere is especially cheerful, what with the Queen in a bleak mood over the fate of her troublesome cousin, Mary Stuart, hanging in the balance.

Someone else is not enjoying the festivities: Tom is in attendance, waiting for something to happen – something he had a hand in preparing; something that should tip the scales… So, when one of the tumblers is found dead in the stables courtyard, apparently fallen from a window, it should be none of Tom’s business…

Except, this particular tumbler was essential to the plan Tom had set in motion for his kinsman and master Sir Francis Walsingham – who is already on the Queen’s bad side these days, and can’t afford to have his secret manoeuvres exposed.

Add in a greedy moneylender, rival fencing-masters, and a reckless poet… can Tom solve the murder and save the day for Sir Francis, without ending dead himself – or in gaol?

Find out by reading… A Snare of Deceit!

Death in Rheims – Publication day!

26 Friday May 2023

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Here we go! Today is the day!

Tom Walsingham is back in France – and right into the lion’s den!

It was never supposed to be the easiest of missions – but once Tom arrives in Rheims, deep into restless France, he finds  that things are very different from what he and his powerful cousin, Sir Francis, had anticipated… And to find out just what threats are being prepared for Queen Elizabeth, this time our boy will have to take some really huge risks.

What’s worse, in theory he has plenty of support – but is there anyone he can really trust?

Aliases, betrayals, murders, looming war, lies aplenty, and a young rapscallion of a poet called Kit Marley… Tom is back for his most dangerous adventure yet!

Follow him as he tries to untangle, as Sir Francis would say, the joints and flexures of… Death in Rheims!

Book Three of the Tom Walsingham Mysteries is out today with Sapere Books. Findi it on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback formats!

Tom Walsingham’s Book 3 is out!

30 Sunday Oct 2022

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So here it is: A Treasonous Path, Tom’s second adventure in espionage and sleuthing, is out both as a Kindle ebook and a paperback! As usual, the lovely people at Sapere Books have done a great work: I love it all!

And what does Tom deal with, this time?

  • A mysterious informant from the French Embassy (mysterious as in “won’t tell us his  real name”…);
  • An awfully hot summer;
  • Murder, of course – and not just one;
  • A few temperamental Scots;
  • A traffic of forbidden books;
  • Fencing masters and eccentric philosophers – all of them from Italy, all of them of unknown trustworthiness;
  • A plot against the Queen;
  • An enigmatic woman;
  • His own family;
  • Fanatics from all over Europe;
  • Midnight visitors;
  • Grumbling underlings;
  • …

Are you curious yet? You can find A Treasonous Path – ebook or paperbachk – here.

 

A Treasonous Path… almost!

20 Thursday Oct 2022

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Tom gave a last, narrow-eyed frown at the letter’s signature — a false name, since no “Henry Fagot” resided with the French Ambassador, Monsieur de Castelnau at Salisbury Court. But then, the whole matter was a rigmarole: a mysterious informant writing his letters in bad French, and hiding them in an Italian fencing-master’s hat. Almost too fanciful to be true — and yet…

This was the third time, since returning from France late in May, that Tom had been summoned to the wood-panelled study, and set to read this fellow Fagot’s papers, and then made to unpick their meaning under his great cousin’s Sphinx-like scrutiny.

“So, Thomas?”

Tom took a good deep breath and straightened away from the windowsill. “So the French Ambassador’s servants are smuggling in Catholic books, but that is more an embarrassment than anything else,” he said — slow and considering. “Either this Henry Fagot is not very good at telling what is important, or he has a grudge against the Ambassador’s butler and cook…”

Publication day for Book Two of Tom Walsingham’s adventures in espionage and sleuthing is little more than a week away… Continue reading →

Dumas on counting words

08 Thursday Sep 2022

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This one is for T.

I’m always a little amused at being reminded that, in my corner of the world, measuring a written text in words, is still a somewhat alien notion. No, really. I still run into people who go round eyed and ask how on earth are they going to keep count – and are genuinely amazed to discover that any word processor will do it for them… Continue reading →