As you might have already seen elsewhere on this website, my novella, The Perfect Murder, is going to be published very soon.
Although the book is not officially on sale until March 4th, it is not embargoed to a specific date, like the Roy Grace novels, and a number of retailers, including Amazon, are already starting to sell it.
This short book, part of the Government “Quick Reads” initiative, is a darkly humorous story, set in Brighton, about a husband who is planning to murder his wife, and doesn’t realise she is planning to murder him…
The Quick Reads initiative works like this: every year ten authors from different genres, fiction and non-fiction, are commissioned to write a novella, to be launched on World Book Day (March 4th) for the Literacy Trust, which encourages people who do not normally read books to have a go at one. The brief is that the stories should be typical of the writer’s work, in the same genre, but must be easy to read – there are restrictions on long words and the typeface is larger than normal. One of the target groups are prisoners who, in the UK, have a startlingly low reading age of just 9, on average.
“The Perfect Murder” is my contribution to the Quick Reads initiative. But, although I have avoided long words, I think that all my current readers might enjoy it. It has a great quote from the current Chief Constable of Sussex, Martin Richards, at the start: A couple of years ago when I met him for the first time, I asked him what he thought would be the perfect murder. He gave me the wonderful reply: “The perfect murder is the one we never hear about.”
Ths book is “noir” with some dark humour, and whilst a murder story set in Brighton, which I think will appeal to all my Roy Grace fans, it also has some elements of supernatural, which those of you who like my earlier books may also enjoy.