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Novels & Stories

Local Resistance
A Bob Robbins Home Front Mystery
Murder and Make Do
According to PC Laurie Oliver nothing ever happens in Porthferris. But in the spring of 1941, Maisie Rose Hawkins leaves her husband out in the rain to die; an axe-wielding farmer threatens a rationing inspector; and an elderly spinster is suspected of murder. While Dad’s Army is practising hilarious defence measures and an Army major is equipping the disused copper mine as an Operations Base for Churchill’s ‘Secret Army’, a German u-boat surfaces in the bay at night. Everybody knows everybody’s secrets, but nobody quite knows the truth. Can reluctant wartime detective Bob Robbins discover what is really going on, and why there is so much local resistance?

Private Lives
A Bob Robbins Home Front Mystery
Cozy crime with a sinister twist and a dash of dark humour
While reluctant wartime detective Bob Robbins is enjoying a few days’ holiday on the North Devon coast he becomes involved in a shooting incident on a derelict farm. An elderly farmer lies injured, and then disappears. A young man is found dead in the barn. Bob reports the incident to the local police in Bideford, but they are so over-stretched with extra Home Front duties he finds himself in charge of the case. In urgent need of assistance, Bob requests the help of the young police recruit Laurie Oliver. They take rooms at Peony Villas, an unusual sort of guest house where a troupe of London actors are in residence, and where Bob soon finds himself involved in yet another peculiar mystery.

Courting Danger
A Bob Robbins Home Front Mystery.
Wartime rural police procedural
Cornwall, England, 1943. Dumpy, grumpy wartime Detective Segreant Bob Robbins is called out to investigate a suspected suicide in a remote moorland pool. Gogmagog Ditch has a history steeped in Cornish folklore, but what attracted the victim to such a desolate spot and why?
Dr Corin Lanyon was liked by all and loved by many – especially women. As Bob untangles the victim’s various relationships and close connection to a Celtic Circle heritage group, he confirms the doctor’s death was no accident. Ably assisted by the bright but naïve PC Laurie Oliver, Bob uncovers a web of criminality, deceit, and stolen museum artefacts, but could any of the eclectic ensemble be guilty of murder?

Secret Meetings
Book 4 in the Bob Robbins Home Front Mystery
A wartime country house murder mystery
I began writing Secret Meetings largely because I wanted to have a go at a country house murder mystery. While doing research, I came across a snippet about Winston Churchill and General Eisenhower disappearing for an ultra-secret meeting in Scotland before the Normandy Landings. How, I wondered, could Churchill disappear from public view in 1944? Answer: they used an impersonator. Enter DS Bob Robbins.
Reading more about D-Day gave me the material for a wartime espionage story. Except, as in most of my novels, there is also a more domestic affair involving questions of loyalty and double dealing running through it.
International events and skulduggery, domestic politics, love and loyalty; a similar outline to The Chosen Man Trilogy, but set in one location. I thought this would make it easier. It didn’t. Not at all. Secret Meetings was hard to write, and especially hard to get right, so I am thrilled by the positive reviews it is now getting.

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