1--What is the title of your latest release?
MURDER AT PRIMROSE COTTAGE
2--What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
When Flora Steele sets off for a peaceful vacation, the last thing she expects to find is a body in her cottage garden, or to feel her safety threatened as she uncovers long-hidden secrets from the wartime past.
3--How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
Flora owns a bookshop in a small Sussex village called Abbeymead in the south of England, and most of her adventures take place in that area. In this third book in the mystery series, though, she is on holiday in Cornwall, a county I know well. It’s a magical place, with magnificent landscape and a stunning coastline.
4--Would you hang out with your heroine in real life?
I would! Flora is a feisty girl, courageous and hardworking, who confronts the barriers facing women in the 1950s with energy and humor.
5--What are three words that describe your hero?
Lanky, laconic, caring.
6--What’s something you learned while writing this book?
How involved Cornwall was in the Second World War, particularly in preparations for the D-Day invasion.
7--Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
A bit of both. I revise each chapter as I write into something that resembles reasonable but, once the story is down, I’ll do another two or three drafts until any plot glitches are sorted and I’m happy with the way it reads.
8--What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
Cheese souffle but not when I’m trying to lose weight!
9--Describe your writing space/office!
I have a room at the very top of the house. It’s light and bright and, best of all, has a window in the roof through which I can only see sky and cloud, so no distractions.
10--Who is an author you admire?
So many, among them Kate Atkinson for combining literary fiction with crime, Sarah Waters for her brilliant historical fiction and Lisa Jewell for spine-tingling psychological noir.
11--Is there a book that changed your life?
I would say it’s the sum of all my reading that has helped shaped me, rather than one particular book.
12--Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published)
I started writing professionally with a Regency Romance and got the call from Mills and Boon while sitting on my sofa mid-December suffering from flu and feeling very sorry for myself. That was 12 years ago.
13--What’s your favorite genre to read?
I read widely - literary fiction, crime, women’s fiction, historical - no favorite genre, just a good book.
14--What’s your favorite movie?
Whichever I’ve enjoyed most recently! Last night, I saw The Duke, the real-life story of the man who stole a valuable portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in 1961. The film might not appeal to an American audience, but I found it quirky, funny, very well-acted and it nailed the early Sixties brilliantly.
15--What is your favorite season?
That’s an easy one - summer.
16--How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
Most of all, I love to go on holiday. This year we’re taking a trip to Venice.
17--What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
This is Going to Hurt - Ben Wishaw stars as a put-upon young doctor. It’s both hilarious and tender.
18--What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
Vegetarian
19--What do you do when you have free time?
Dance exercise classes - ballet and fitstep. Walking on the South Downs. Learning Italian. I belong to a writing group and a book group.
20--What can readers expect from you next?
The next book in the Flora Steele mysteries, out in August: MURDER AT THE PRIORY HOTEL
Flora Steele Mystery #3
Join Flora Steele – bookshop owner, bicycle rider, daydreamer and amateur detective – in her quest to solve a brand-new murder mystery!
Cornwall, 1956: When Flora Steele sets off for a peaceful vacation with crime writer Jack Carrington in his little red Austin, the last thing she expects to find is a body at their pretty rental cottage!
Shocked by the discovery, inquisitive Flora joins forces with handsome Jack to find out how the poor man came to such an untimely end in the overgrown orchard of Primrose Cottage. They discover Roger Gifford was a man with plenty of friends and the villagers seem devastated by his sudden death…
So why was he murdered? And who has blood on their hands – his estranged wife Beatrice, his wayward younger brother Lionel, or the suspicious newcomer Mercy Dearlove?
The baffling case gets even more complicated when a second man is found dead and a set of puzzling clues lead them to an intriguing wartime mystery connected to Jack’s estranged father.
As old secrets emerge and Jack receives an unsettling letter, it seems the crime writer is in danger of a fate befitting his fictional characters. Will Flora be able to crack the case and save Jack? Or will this be one murder too many for Flora Steele?
Mystery Woman Sleuth [Bookouture, On Sale: March 18, 2022, Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9781803140728 / ]
Bestselling author Merryn Allingham was born into an army family and spent her childhood on the move. Unsurprisingly, it gave her itchy feet and in her twenties she escaped an unloved secretarial career to work as cabin crew and see the world. The arrival of marriage, children and cats meant a more settled life in the south of England, where she’s lived ever since. Having gained a PhD, she taught university literature for many years and loved every minute of it. What could be better than spending one’s life reading and talking about books? Well, writing them perhaps.
Six Regency period romances followed, then those itchy feet kicked in. The Regency was abandoned and Daisy's War, a wartime trilogy, found its way to the top of the Amazon charts, followed by the Summerhayes books—a saga of romance and intrigue set in the Sussex countryside during the summers of 1914 and 1944.
But itchy feet never rest and in 2020 she finally went over to the dark side! The crime series, the Tremayne Mysteries, is set in locations around the world and features Nancy, a feisty 1950s heroine, turned amateur sleuth.
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