About
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to solve a murder?
I did, spending weeks and months, determined to create a contemporary sleuth, who readers would find plausible and entertaining.
While I was driving around my South Downs district, I wondered what might happen if I found a body in the bottom of a freezer during a food hygiene inspection.
I’d call the police, of course.
But in my novel, there was no reason why an environmental health officer like me couldn’t investigate? I had the training, the skills and I’d investigated several fatal workplace accidents.
What if a murder was disguised as a work accident?
It gave me the idea for No Accident, the first novel in the Downland Murder Mystery series.
The rest is down to Miss Marple and Agatha Christie, whose novels and TV adaptations gave me a passion for murder mysteries and the classic whodunit. Miss Marple fitted in with my desire to have an ordinary person solve a murder.
I loved the idea of an underdog, a bit of an outsider with a strong sense of justice and fair play.
He became environmental health officer Kent Fisher.
After a few false starts and struggles with No Accident, I was making little progress. Other authors told me to move on and write something new.
Instead, I gave up writing for nine months.
But I never forgot how I wanted to solve a murder.
I returned with a blog called Fisher’s Fables, which was a humorous spoof of my management experiences. As a manager and enforcement officer, I had to be careful. So I let Kent Fisher narrate the blog, populating it with a fictional department and characters from No Accident.
Kent Fisher came to life. He was a lot like me, but still his own man.
Excited, and filled with new energy, confidence and belief, I rewrote No Accident, which went on to be published in June 2016 by a US Independent publisher.
Another nine novels have followed, showing how an ordinary person can solve the most complex murders.
I finally solved a murder.
If you’d like to learn more, please take a look at the books.
Alternatively, you can join my Readers Group for more insights and updates. You’ll receive a free story called Dirty Work, which reveals how Kent Fisher’s relentless pursuit of justice began. Simply click on the image below.
In case you were wondering – answers to some of the questions you may have about the novels, how Kent Fisher became an accidental detective, and more.
