The Cairo Brief

Drum rolls and trumpet toots … ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the new Poppy Denby! The Cairo Brief, fourth in the series, will be published 21 September. If you haven’t read the first three books yet, I suggest you get started! They are great holiday reads (if I may say so myself).

Poppy Denby is on top form solving the mystery surrounding the ancient Egyptian mask of Queen Nefertiti. Highly recommended!

Dolores Gordon-Smith, author of the Jack Haldean murder mysteries

Intrepid Poppy Denby visits a country estate not unlike Downton Abbey in this caper. It’s great fun following Fiona’s crew of early 20th-century reporters as they seek scoops and solve murders on the side

Deb Richardson-Moore, author of The Cantaloupe Thief, The Cover Story and Death of a Jester

Thoroughly enjoyable mystery. Murders, sinister figures, a cursed Egyptian maskā€¦and a seance! All the ingredients for another superlative Poppy Denby investigation.

A. J. Wright, award-winning author of the Lancashire Detective Series.

Fiona Veitch Smith, where have you been all my life? Poppy Denby is delightful, the plot rocks, and the 1920s era is perfectly evoked. British mystery fans, you want to read this. You really, really do.

Cassandra Chan, Author of the Bethancourt & Gibbons mysteries

Newcastle Noir Crime Festival

I was honoured to be asked, along with Kate Shackleton author Frances Brody, to open the fringe of the Newcastle Noir Crime Festival last week. We spoke to a packed audience about the Golden Age of Crime Fiction and the pros and cons of writing books set in the 1920s. Thanks to the wonderful Dr Jacky Collins and her team of volunteers at the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society for a fantastic weekend.

The Death Beat and 1920s US Immigration Policy

I’ll be giving a talk at Newcastle Central Library at 6pm on Thursday 18 January on the background to The Death Beat. The book is set against the 1921 US Immigration Restriction Act, which has some disturbing parallels with today. Come along for a warm welcome and interesting discussion. The event is free, but please register your interest here. Signed books will be available to purchase.

Give My Regards To Uncle Stalin

Today I am guesting on the Crime Readers’ Association Blog. I talk about how readers sometimes read books through their own personal lens and how one reader objected to my portrayal of Josef Stalin in book 2 of the Poppy Denby Investigates series – when Stalin doesn’t even appear in the book! I do, however, present a cross-section of characters who are both pro and anti-Bolshevism in a period when people were still trying to work out what the new movement might mean. The Kill Fee is set against the Russian Revolution and the plight of the exiled Romanovs in London.Poppy meets an eclectic mix of them including a White Russian princess actress, the killer of Rasputin, and some secret agents from both sides of the conflict. Our intrepid sleuth has to find her way through it all to track down the thief of a priceless Faberge Egg and to stop a murderer from striking again. To read the whole article visit the CRA Blog here.

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