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Twenty-six-year-old Clarry Pennhaligan of The Love Detective is a generously proportioned size 14. And she’s completely cool with that. She’s healthy, she’s fit, she’s attractive… and she loves food. “I am not, repeat not, a fitness freak (I’m very happy being a curvy girl), but I do need something to work off my highly indulgentRead more

The role of amateur detective has always appealed to me. The artless inexperienced meddler asking questions, stirring things up and getting in to a whole heap of trouble. So I decided to write a novel from the perspective of a young female investigator and let her loose upon an unsuspecting world. Clarry Pennhaligan is anRead more

I have found that one of the most enjoyable aspects of reading a novel that has really grabbed me, is discussing it afterwards. Conducting a literary post-mortem. We all see things differently, often subjectively, and so discussing a book’s central themes and the issues it raises, as a group, can be enlightening and good funRead more

I am hugely excited that in just one weeks time I will be participating in my first event to launch The Love Detective! The event is a Novel London double book launch at Hatchards Cross. I will be reading the extract below from my debut novel, The Love Detective, and I am very much lookingRead more

I was almost certainly wasting my time here, I decided, when I heard voices and looked up to see Simon coming out from behind his front gate dressed in a pair of jeans and a casual shirt. He also had something draped about his arms and it wasn’t a sweater. Well, well, well, I thought,Read more

I was waiting for him as the BMW drew up. We didn’t bother to exchange pleasantries. Simon headed off down the path with an abrupt, “We might as well talk inside.” But, he suddenly stopped short and turned uncertainly towards me, his voice low, “The door’s open.” I looked past him and sure enough theRead more

I made my way down the hall passing a large double sitting room hung with framed posters depicting bands from the seventies and eighties. I spotted Paul Weller’s lean frame and distinctive haircut on an album cover suspended above the fireplace, but I only vaguely recognised some of the other faces. Twenty or so peopleRead more

We’re told that the sleep of the just, of the innocent, is the soundest. Not true. I slept so heavily, so deeply that I woke up with a sleep hangover, woolly in the head and heavy in the legs. A run wasn’t going to do it. I needed to swim. Grumbling because I still hadn’tRead more

Allowing a couple of cars to get in front of me, I eased out into the traffic behind him. Now I’ve seen it in films and on TV of course, but actually following another car without drawing attention to oneself is no easy thing. There’s a lot of weaving in and out. The driver ofRead more

Clarry is 26 years old, single, bright, funny, attractive and enjoying a makeshift existence as a part time waitress. She has a request from Laura, a solicitor and her best friend, to check out whether her new boyfriend Simon, an estate agent, is really interested in her or only in the business she can put his way.Read more