Date to remember: 83 years ago today, at approx 21.45, this fashionable and iconic venue was hit by two 50KG bombs with devastating consequences.
Being subterranean the Cafe was thought to be a safe place but by a freak of fate both devices found their way down to the dance floor via a ventilation shaft, exploding just in front of the band stand. Continue reading “Cafe de Paris 8th March 1941 #research #bunchcourtneyinvestigations #crimefiction #amwriting”
Getting things right wherever possible is a must for me, and today – while adding fresh words to the WIP – ie the next Bunch Courtney Investigation – I realised that having given Thurloe Square as the location for her family’s town house I knew relatively little about it.
So down the research rabbit hole I went! Continue reading “Thurloe Square : Research #thurloesquare #ww2 #scrapforvictory”
Deadly Plot – the latest Bunch Courtney investigation – due out in the new year – has reached 1941/2 and it occurred to me as I embark on my annual sweet making for Christmas making such gifts for family and friends that sweets & chocolate rationing during the war would have been tough for Bunch and her contemporaries. Not that my undomesticated crime-fighter Bunch Courtney would have had the slightest clue how 😊 Continue reading “Sweets to be Had in 1942 : Deadly Plot Bunch Courtney book #5 #bunchcourtney #ww2crime #writing”
Deadly Plot : Bunch Courtney Investigation #5 is ready to roll and I shall be putting a call out for reviewers very soon.
But…
Due to circs beyond control the publication date has been delayed until the new year – for which I offer my humblest apologies!
Meanwhile, to wet your appetite, a small extract from Chapter one!
Warning : contains a very dead body! Continue reading “Extract from Deadly Plot – Due out early 2024 #deadlyplot #extract #bunchcourtney”
Soooooooooo excited!
I am told there may be minor tweaks to the finished book – but could not wait to show you all the cover for the latest in my historical crime series The Bunch Courtney Investigations.
Deadly Plot : Bunch Courtney Investigation #5 “Petty thefts in Wyncombe’s victory gardens take an unexpected turn when body of Nario Costa, an Italian POW, who escaped six months before, is disinterred by foxes on the allotments. Bunch Courtney is left to start preliminary inquiries into what first appears to be a cold case when DCI Wright is called away, but events soon take a darker turn as the body count begins to grow as she uncovers links to local businesses!”
This one has taken a while to get out there for a variety of reasons but it’s now in final edits and due out in October (or even September) 2023!
Deadly Plot will be available at all good stores, or you can pre-order signed editions of this and others in the series direct from me! (UK only) Just PM me for details.
Some of you will already be aware that I shall be at the Birmingham Book Signing Event on 15th July at the Council House, Birmingham. In addition to appearing on panels I shall – as the event title suggests – be signing my books!
What shall I have there to be purchased and signed? Obviously my Bunch Courtney Investigations!
Winter Downs : Bunch Courtney Investigations #1 When Bunch Courtney is riding across the South Downs the last thing she expects to stumble upon is the body of her friend Jonathan Frampton. The shotgun at his feet speaks of suicide but Bunch is not convinced. – In the winter of 1940 a tiny rural community on the Sussex Downs, already preparing for invasion, finds itself deep in the grip of a snowy landscape with an ice-cold killer on the loose.
Winner of the Arnold Bennett Book Prize!
In Her Defence : Bunch Courtney Investigations #2 Bunch Courtney’s hopes for a quiet market-day lunch with her sister are shattered when a Dutch refugee dies a horribly painful death before their eyes. A few days later Bunch receives a letter from her old friend Cecile saying that her father, Professor Benoir, has been murdered in an eerily similar fashion. Two deaths by poisoning in a single week. Co-incidence? Bunch does not believe that any more than Chief Inspector William Wright. Set against a backdrop of escalating war and the massed internment of 1940, the pair are drawn together in a race to prevent the murderer from striking again.
Listed Dead : Bunch Courtney Investigations #3 Claude Naysmith’s fatal car crash occurs on the borders of the Perringham Estate and Bunch Courtney can hardly avoid being drawn into events. When the body of Penelope James is found just a few miles away, clutching a list of names that includes both herself and Naysmith, Bunch and Wright are left wondering. Could this be a hit list? Is it sheer coincidence? Since neither Bunch nor DCI Wright believe in coincidences they must throw their combined efforts into the investigation before any more of those names wind up on the mortuary slab.
In Cases of Murder : Bunch Courtney Investigations #4 When the body of Laura Jarman is discovered crammed into a steamer trunk and dumped on a Brighton railway platform, her wealthy industrialist families are shouting for answers, but their reluctance to co-operate with the investigation arouses suspicion from all sides. What could possibly link Laura to private gentlemen’s parties on the edge of sleepy Wyncombe village, and what are her family so desperate to conceal? When Laura’s London flatmate is murdered in an almost identical style, Bunch Courtney and DCI William Wright find themselves racing along a convoluted trail through munitions factories and London clubs to a final shocking end.
A Deadly Plot : Bunch Courtney Investigations #5 due autumn 2023!
Party to Murder : Bunch Courtney Investigations #6 due spring 2024!
I also hope to be bringing copies of:
A Small Thing for Yolanda – a Folk Horror novella set in Paris of 1937. The Métro Murder is one of the most famous unsolved crimes of the 1930s. Who was Laetitia Toureaux? What were her links within the murky world of spies and secret political movements? All of those things remain shrouded in mystery, despite the fact that her movements on her final day are well documented. How was she stabbed to death in an apparently empty Métro carriage? And by whom? A Small Thing for Yolanda offers one potential solution.
Sussex Tales – a stunning slice of times past – set against the rolling Sussex hills of the early 1960s. Jan Edwards’s prize-winning Sussex Tales runs a witty and thought provoking gamut of village events and its more curious characters. From fanged ferrets to bulls in lead masks; ancient hand grenades to exploding ginger beer; cricketing dogs to wassailing orchards – Sussex Tales weaves traditional country wines, recipes, folklore and Sussex dialect into these natural tales of living a farming childhood in the vanished world of 1950s and 60s rural life.
I hope to see many of you there!
All of the above titles are available as kindle and paper editions from the usual sources – but unsigned 🙂
Today has been about making jam. Strawberry jam to be precise and it occurred to me, as I poured 3 pounds of sugar into the pan of cooked strawberries, that making jam for the characters in my Bunch Courtney Investigations with all of the restrictions of war time rationing must have been hard.
Like Bunch and Co this time of year when the allotment is brimming it can be hard to keep up with the harvesting. Just yesterday I picked 2 kilos of strawberries and there are plenty more to come!
Knowing what to do with the excess is not as easy as you might think and would have been harder still without access to large enough quantities of basics such as sugar, vinegar etc!
Sugar was one of the first things to go on ration as 1940 dawned. Dig for Victory had already come into being but there is only so much that can be done with the fruit people were exhorted to grow, and if there was a glut how could the fruit be preserved?
Many people made sure that they saved some of their precious ration in anticipation of making jams. I found one reference to the government increasing it’s weekly sugar ration during harvest times to help families preserve what they had grown and the weekly allowance per person would sometimes increase from 8 oz to 16 oz per week. I found no other references to sugar rationing being ‘variable’ and so could not verify those facts.
I did find several references to the Government grant of £1,400 given to the W.I. to buy sugar in order to preserve the precious fruits and avoid waste.
Preservation centres were set up in farm kitchens and village halls, manned – or rather womaned – by volunteers of both the WI and WVS, and between 1940 and 1945 it is estimated that 5,300 tons of fruit was turned 1,600 tons of jam!
Many low sugar recipes were devised, some more successful that others using glucose and even artificial sweeteners (which needed gelatine in order that the jam would ‘gel’).
So much for jams and pickles. But the need for winter foods meant that other methods were required to keep the harvest over winter.
I recall my mother ‘salting’ runner beans and other veg in the early 1960s before she was able to buy a small domestic freezer. It didn’t matter how many times those beans were rinsed they were salty as hell!
The traditional method of preserving fruit for winter use here in the UK had always been bottling it in the familiar clip-top ‘Kilner’ jars. This method is efficient but does require sugary syrup to keep the produce edible.
Enter the Canadian WI who organised the donation of home canning machines to enable British housewives to preserve their allotment and garden harvests. Once the canning system was seen to be so efficient many a jumble sale and whist drive was organised to buy more machines.
By these methods thousands of tons of jams, pickles and canned produce were grown and preserved by the women on the home front to feed their families and I have added more pages to my research pile for the Bunch Courtney Investigations to come!
Meanwhile there are four titles to catch up on!
I am currently writing the sixth Bunch Courtney Investigation (working title Party to Murder) and for the sake of verisimilitude thought I should see how common it was for women to wear trousers beyond boiler suits and fatigues in factory and military work parties or the famous Land Army jodhpurs.
I was reasonably sure there were no legal cases related to the wearing of trousers by British women but because of my heroine’s need to cover her leg injured in the line of duty (twice!) I wanted to make sure of my facts as I know from experience that assumptions of historical fact can so often be wrong.
Illegal to wear trousers you say? Surely not… Read on!
On a previous dive into research I came across the slim volume Court in the Act : Crime and Policing in WWII Hastings that speaks of a young women being reprimanded for appearing improperly dressed in a Hastings (Sussex) magistrate’s court– i.e. she was not wearing a hat. This 18 year old girl was fined £1 for driving without a licence but going hatless, it seems, broke social convention rather than any laws. As wartime rationing of clothes came into being the hat-habit went into decline, though going out in public without a hat or headscarf was still viewed as a little ‘fast’ in many eyes.
So what about trousers and the law?
I expected to find Hollywood stars such as Dietrich and Garbo making a splash in the late 1930s with trouser fashions, and so they did, causing quite a stir in many places. Imagine my surprise to read that in certain US cities in the late 1800s trouser wearing for women was made illegal. Famous surgeon and abolitionist Mary Walker was arrested several times for ‘wearing male apparel’ and records show that her insistence on wearing them was better received in Britain than her native America. The Great War and emancipation seemed to bring most of the trouser laws to an end, and it was doubtless the appearance of Eleanor Roosevelt at an official function in 1933 that finally made trouser-wearing acceptable.
Similar anti-trews laws existed in France and indeed Marlene Dietrich was famously detained at a Paris train station in 1933 for contravening that rule, which I am told was only repealed in 2013…
So far as I can see Britain had never had such laws.
As in America it was women taking up traditionally male work in the Great War and woman finally gaining the vote in the 1920s that broke down remaining social taboos.
As society rules relaxed women wore jodhpurs for riding horses and motorcycles or fly planes. They wore shorts for football (women’s football was huge in the UK during WW1 until 1921 when the FA banned them from playing on official FA pitches…) The British craze for walking and cycling holidays in the 1920s and 30s also had a hand in fashionable leisure wear leaning toward slacks and shorts (though it would be the 1960s before jeans became a thing).
Clothes rationing was rolled out in the UK in 1941 and as their clothes and precious coupons were saved for growing children woman resorted increasingly to raiding the wardrobes of their absent uniform-wearing husbands away in the forces to replace their worn out work wear.
Despite all of the above, including Vogue magazine’s ‘The Case for Slacks’ special in 1939, it seems that skirts and dresses were still the norm for women in general and most still preferred to ‘dress up’ for social occasions. But the Hon. Rose (Bunch) Courtney can be at ease as a rebel in Oxford bags.
Creating that sense of a particular place in history is always a balance. I am not talking here about that cardinal sin of all fiction writers; the info dump! The settings and historical facts are relatively easy to find and provided you smother the impulse to use every scrap of research you have unearthed, will give a good sense of the where and when.
The trickier part is finding that sense in the dialogue.
It’s never a good idea to use a great deal of dialects or accent because unless the reader is familiar with it and can hear it as they read then it can exclude them to a point where they lose interest.
The use of slang terms can be just as hard. For one thing slang changes so quickly. In a current setting words overheard in use this week can often be outdated by the time your story ever gets to the bookshelf a year or so later.
Having said that, it may be because slang goes out of date very quickly when writing dialogue in historic fiction that sense of verbal carbon dating becomes the whole point. You want people to feel that these are inhabitants of a certain time and place. The trick as always is in using them sparingly so that you don’t exclude the reader with unknown terms and finding the right words in the first place but sprinkling dialogue with enough of them to feel realistic.
Some words do linger for a surprisingly long period of time. Words like ‘twit’ (idiot) or phrases such as ‘knowing your onions’ (having a working knowledge) or ‘bees knees’ (outstandingly good) come from the first half of the 20th century but can still be heard in today – though probably less often now that we are in the 21st century.
In the UK at least there is also the matter of class to consider. For one character to call another ‘old thing’ or even ‘old bean’ hints as their being relatively well off. Referring to someone being a ‘steamer’ (as in steaming great twit) or calling out ‘alright, mush?(or mate)’ would not be out of place in a 1930s Eastend pub.
There are plenty of slang dictionaries of course, both printed and virtual, which in theory will help a writer pinpoint that exact word for a specific moment being spoken by the right person – and they are very useful up to a point. I have at least six on my desk as I speak and the answer to my problem may well be buried in one of them.
My problem is that they list the vernacular and translate them into proper/correct grammar – whereas what I really want is to know what I want to say in ‘correct’ terms but using vernacular specific to the 1940s.
For example: today I am working on my sixth Bunch Courtney Investigation and want my posh young British Army officer to jokingly say that the police (specifically Scotland Yard detectives) are expected at the house.
What would he call them? Peeler is a Victorian term. Fuzz or pigs feel too modern. Plods? Rozzers? Bobbies? None of those seemed quite right coming from this characters mouth.
I can drag out the various slang lists and scroll through from A to Z but from experience I know that takes an age. A thematic dictionary might help but are often aimed at modern vernacular.
In the end I shall doubtless have him say ‘the Yard’ because the word that I am stretching for either does not exist or has been lost in the mists, as many of the slang words of today will be – ephemeral snapshots that in a short space of time will simply evaporate.
Finding that word in not important in the scheme of things. I know that my readers will never miss it and I know in my heart that searching for it is just another kind of prevarication that writers the world over are so good at inventing.
But… Verisimilitude! Be a pal and pass me that ‘Book of WW2 Slang’, would you?
I have just been sent a link to some 1941 Ministry of Information films held by the Imperial War Museums and tagged:
(links to films below)
From the Four Corners Part One
From the Four Corners Part Two
Getting the tone of the period while remaining relevant to a modern audience is always something of a tightrope walk and seeing the kinds of public information and propaganda films that movie goers would have seen between the A and B movies (or more likely B and A for those of us who still remember getting two films for our money before the dawn of Muliplexes) is one way of referencing that era.
These clips are especially fun for me and any fan of the Bunch Courtney Investigations because Leslie Howard is exactly who I see when I am writing about her partner in crime-busting, Chief Inspector William Wright!
The latest book In Cases of Murder is out now!
Stuck for Christmas pressies for the reader in your life? Look no further!
Bunch Courtney Investigation Christmas Offer!
Signed paperbacks of the award winning WW2 crime series.
1 for £10 or 3 for £25 (inc P&P in UK)
Hurry! While stocks last! message me!
Other signed titles available: (see bibliography for details)
Calling all reviewers and book bloggers!
I hope you are doing well in these troubled times. You may have already heard that Listed Dead, the third in the award-winning WW2 Bunch Courtney Investigations, is out this summer. I shall be sending out digital proofs/ARCs very soon, and if you are a book blogger or reviewer with a hankering for some historical crime fiction drop me a message.
LISTED DEAD – Jan Edwards
ISBN: 978-1-9164373-7-1
Paperback: £9.99 / ebook £2.95
Publication: 6th August 2020 – The Penkhull Press
“November 1940. The Battle of Britain has only just ended and the horror of the Blitz is reaching its height.
What could possibly link a fatal auto accident with the corpse in a derelict shepherd’s hut? The only clue the pair have is a handwritten list of the members of a supper club that meets at London’s Café de Paris.
With two name on that list dead Bunch Courtney and Chief Inspector Wright are brought together once more in a race to solve the mystery before any more end up on the mortuary slab.”
Previous titles in the series: Winter Downs; In Her Defence
For further information please contact Penkhull Press at: https://thepenkhullpress.wordpress.com/
Jan is available for Q&A s and interviews. Get in touch via the contacts page on this blog.
In the interests of research as I write the Bunch Courtney Investigations I do acquire a fair number of books.
Yes, I can look up small points things up online as I go along but reading around the subject often highlights aspects that I had not previously considered.
Today I received a copy of Working for Victory : a diary of life in a second world war factory – edited by Sue Bruley. This is a diary of a munitions worker in Croydon during WW2.
Listed Dead : Bunch Courtney Investigation #3 is on the way, but my next work in progress, the tentatively titled In Cases of Murder : BCI #4, involves a factory setting.
In common with many people of that era my mother seldom (barely) spoke of her war work in a munitions factory as a fuse setter during that time, in Croydon… The crossing of streams was in no way intentional, but searching information for Bunch Courtney and finding this book was… Spooky.
Now I don’t expect my mother to be mentioned in this book, and I have no way of knowing if it is even covering the same factory, but it will at least give me a good working knowledge of the work and ethos of those places.
Partly as research for In Cases of Murder, but also as a means of understanding just what my mother and aunt both experienced in that time, I am looking forward to reading this one.
It will be an interesting read on several counts.
The cover of Working for Victory is the well known work by Dame Laura Knight titled ‘Ruby Loftus Screwing a Breech Ring’ commissioned by the War Artists Advisory Committee during WW2 as a boost for morale amongst factory workers enduring long, gruelling hours on the factory floor. It is generally viewed as the UK equivalent of the USA’s ‘Rosie the Riveter’. A well-researched novel by Clare Harvey called The Night Raid was woven around the painting of that piece.
Not sure this is a Bunch Courtney Investigates issue so much as a word of caution. Never rely on your memory for the facts!
I was just about to paraphrase a song title in my work in progress, set in 1941 and I was 99% certain that it was a valid choice.
But out of sheer habit I turned to the musical databases to check it out.
Arooga! Warning! Incorrect!
But how was I so convinced that the song fitted the time?
It appears thar ‘We’ll Gather Lilacs (In the Spring Again)’ was not penned by Ivor Novello, or at least it was not performed, until 1945 for his hit musical ‘Perchance to Dream’. This song was recorded by Muriel Barron & Olive Gilbert (1945), and by Geraldo and his Orchestra, who reached the UK charts with it in 1946. Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra (vocal by Stuart Foster) made it a minor hit in the USA in 1946. This is a song that evokes the English Countryside with the sights and scents of Lilacs in springtime. A metaphor for the emotions of parted couples waiting to be reunited. It was played at Novello’s funeral in 1951.
Now the song and the stage production were before my time, but the radio program, Family Favourites (in all its various titles from 1950s onwards), played it a great deal, so it was very familiar to me.
I suspect my ‘false memory’ however, actually came out of the film Lilacs in the Spring. A 1954 British musical film starring Anna Neagle and Errol Flynn, (and, I am told, contains the debut appearance of Sean Connery).
Lilacs in the Spring depicts a young actress, Carole, is being wooed by a producer Charles King. She is unsure about him and when she is caught by a bomb explosion during an air raid in the London Blitz (1940!) Carole is knocked unconscious and in her confused state a series of fantasies set at various points in history flash through her mind as she is pursued and wooed by King.
Now this film was still made before I was born (just) but as a youngster I had a lot of illness and many an afternoon was spent swathed in bed quilts (this was pre-duvet years!) watching TV. As there were very few channels to choose from and this was also the pre-video era, viewing was limited. But quite often (especially on Saturday afternoons – remember Saturday Cinema slot, you oldies?) there were what to me at that age were creaky old films being broadcast. Mother had a liking for old movies so the TV would always be on for those and so I have no doubt I saw this movie at least once – doubtless on a black and white tv – though the film was made in colour – which probably added to the WW2 feel!
I was so certain that the song itself was WW2 Blitz era… and I was so very wrong!
I get ribbed by my other half for my obsession for niche research books, and yes I suspect I am rather old fashioned in my need for ink and paper reference sources, but today it paid off.
Google (other search engines are available) is great for the average writerly needs. Especially now that so many libraries have reduced hours. And lets face it even in their heyday not many were open at 3.30pm on a Sunday.
The ability to type in set words and have a plethora of facts (some more reliable than other it has to be pointed out) is a boon. Writing historical fiction as I do having that tool at my fingertips saves hours of hair-tearing.
A few weeks ago it was breeds of dog. Today it was trains.
Looking into railway lines for the 4th Bunch Courtney Investigation I was drawing blanks on google. Yes I got lots of hits on railways but finding the simple facts about what lines ran where through the county of Sussex in years before Beeching was time consuming to say the least.
Fortunately I had, some time ago, obtained a Bradshaw’s Guide to Surrey and Sussex Railways, which has lain unread for a long while, but voila – it contained all I needed to know at a glance. Result!
I now know where trains stopped, which lines connected where, and all stations (if you will excuse the pun) in between.
Where could a body be dumped. Which line would take the murderer to where and did they need to change lines? Yes in the scheme of things its not much and quite probably the plot would not suffer if it was not exactly right… but I am that nerd.
Aahhh the smell of old books and the sweetness of a fact well found. I love research. Its an illness. There should be a support group 🙂
Like many people we feed the birds in our garden and we have a resident pair of wood pigeons. Bold creatures who barely bother to flap a few feet up into the tress when you pass by. Today for example, having put out some fresh grain in the feeders I pass within feet of this cheeky bird four or five times, almost close enough to touch it.
When I was growing up on the farm in Sussex pigeons my father generally saw pigeons as, at best, a tasty meal or worse as a darned nuisance. They didn’t just eat the farm crops but also his precious garden veg; especially the brassicas, which, ironically, were a splendid accompaniment to pigeon pie.
Not that we ate pigeon often. Mother thought them bony and fiddly to prepare and not nearly as easy to procure as rabbits or even pheasants. I can say this now, as Father is long gone, but throughout his years as shepherd and farm hand Pop was also a prodigious poacher; augmenting the low wages of a farm labourer in those times with free meals to go with all those veg from the garden. (Fictionalised in my nostalgic novel Sussex Tales : Amazon US / UK.)
I spoke recently about how smell is often a key to memory and a useful tool in a writer’s toolkit. But sound is as emotive if not more. The distant cooing of pigeons in the coppice across the field from where we lived was a constant backdrop, mostly it reminds me of long summer days laying in the grass with a good book. But also of cold winter walks when the ground is hard with frost and the trees bare. Its a melancholy sound, that can make you feel so very sad, raising goosebumps with its soft, drown out calls. Yet, at the same time, for me at least, it was also a comforting note.
Father may have cursed them, and Mother hated cooking them, but for me they are a handsome reminder in sound and vision that the world is not all bad.
It was Pigeons which sprang to mind in the opening chapters of Winter Downs, my first Bunch Courtney, along with the a flurry of rooks calling from the tree tops. Pigeons were a staple food stuff during the war years in which these books take place and the Courtney sisters muse on the delights of pigeon cooked with pears and ginger.
For me, however it is the sound of pigeons and rooks and the distant call of the sheep that conjure my childhood.
Winter Downs AMAZON (PAPER AND KINDLE) US / UK/ / AU
INDIE BOUND
BOOK DEPOSITORY
WORDERY
Digital sources:
Apple / Barnes and Noble Nook . Biblioteca /Kobo / Kindle, Overdrive, Playster, Scribd, Tolino, 24 Symbol
In Her Defence Amazon US / UK/ AU / Indie Bound / Book Depository/ Wordery / Waterstones / Foyles
Barnes & Noble / Baker and Taylor – Apple/ Kindle US / UK / AU/ Barnes &Noble Nook /Kobo / Scribd / Tolino / 24 Symbol
Last stop in the In Her Defence Tour is at the Swirl And Thread blog page with an opening extract from the book!
You can buy signed copies of In Her Defence direct from me (PM for details) Or from any of these outlets
Digital sources:
Apple
Barnes and Noble Nook
Biblioteca
Kindle US / UK / AU
Kobo
Overdrive
Playster
Scribd
Tolino
24 Symbol
A Witness Statement – In Her Defence! Blog tour stop with Rowena Hoseason over at Murder, Mayhem and More!
Welcome to author Jan Edwards, whose new wartime mystery novel In Her Defence has just hit the shelves. Heroine Bunch Courtney – who we met in Winter Downstwo years ago – first witnesses the death of a Dutch refugee in a quiet English market town. Just days later she learns of a similar murder by poisoning. Coincidence? Bunch, her sister and Chief Inspector William Wright don’t think so. Set against a backdrop of escalating war and the massed internments of 1940, they’re drawn together to prevent the murderer from striking again.
Sounds ideal for any readers who enjoy ‘golden age’ detective fiction but, as Jan explains, her interests and writing are extremely diverse. Don’t simply dismiss In Her Defence as ‘cosy crime’ just because it’s set amid the rolling Sussex Downs during WW2. Those were dark days indeed, and this is a story which resonates down the decades with…
View original post 1,589 more words
“In her Defence really transports the reader back to 1940, the author has done a magical job of really setting the scene. I got totally lost in the story and could picture every image clearly in my mind while I was reading. I love a good mystery and this is what In her Defence is, a blooming good mystery that totally absorbed me and had me trying to investigate along with Bunch.” Dee-Cee book blogger at Its All About the Books Blog
read the rest here In her Defence by Jan Edwards (@Jancoledwards) #BlogTour
Today’s stop on the Bunch Courtney tour is with Short Book and Scribes where you can read a short extract from In Her Defence.
Bunch meets up with an old school friend and learns of a second mysterious death.
Photos from the launch courtesy of the lovely Kerry of Chataboutbooks!
Today I attended a lovely book launch at a local library, “up ‘anly duck”! 😉
It was great to be able to celebrate the release of In Her Defence with Jan Edwards and friends. There was even cake and I may have indulged in a cherry bakewell, but don’t tell anyone!! 🤐
Anyway, I thought I’d share a few photo’s with you…..
(Includes purchase link!)
Interview over at Alison Morton’s page
Today’s guest, Jan Edwards, is an award winning author with titles that include Winter Downs (Arnold Bennett Book Prize) and Sussex Tales (Winchester Slim Volume award).She also has a BFA Karl Edward Wagner award. A Sussex native, Jan now lives in Norths Staffs.
Her short fiction can be found in crime, horror and fantasy anthologies across the UK and USA. She was a script writer for the Dr Who DVD and book Daemons of Devil’s End. Jan is also an anthologist with the award winning Alchemy Press, co-owned with her husband Peter Coleborn. Their latest anthology is The Alchemy Press Book of Horror.
You can now read both of the Bunch Courtney Investigations on any and all of your Apple devices!
In Her Defence (Bunch Courtney Investigation #2)
Winter Downs (Bunch Courtney Investigation #1)
Baking is progress for tomorrow’s launch/signing at City Central Library, Hanley, Stoke on Trent.
To match the 1940s flavour of the books Misha and I chose those cakes that seemed to fit with the era:
Cherry Bakewells (GF)
Jam tarts (GF)
Viennese Biscuits (GF)
Ginger Toffee Flapjacks (GF)
Chocolate Muffins
Lemon Muffins
Lost In A Good Book on In Her Defence
“Bunch Courtney’s hopes for a quiet market-day lunch with her sister are shattered when a Dutch refugee dies a horribly painful death before their eyes. A few days later Bunch receives a letter from her old friend Cecile saying that her father, Professor Benoir, has been murdered in an eerily similar fashion.
Two deaths by poisoning in a single week. Is this a coincidence? Bunch does not believe that any more than Chief Inspector William Wright.
Set against a backdrop of escalating war and the massed internments of 1940, the pair are drawn together in a race to prevent the murderer from striking again.”
In Her Defence is the second investigation by Bunch Courtney and Chief Inspector William Wright in the Sussex countryside. I haven’t read Winter Downs, the first book of this series but the reader is soon up to speed with Bunch’s back story. As a result of…
View original post 309 more words
review In Her Defence
Bunch Courtney’s hopes
for a quiet market-day lunch with her sister are shattered when a Dutch refugee
dies a horribly painful death before their eyes. A few days later Bunch
receives a letter from her old friend Cecile saying that her father, Professor Benoir,
has been murdered in an eerily similar fashion. Two deaths by poisoning in a
single week. Co-incidence? Bunch does not believe that any more than Chief
Inspector William Wright.
Set against a backdrop of escalating war and the massed internments of 1940, the pair are drawn together in a race to prevent the murderer from striking again.
***
[Bunch Courtney leaned against the top rail of the stock pen, enjoying the sensation of unseasonably warm May sunshine on her back, and perused the pair of Jersey heifers she had purchased at auction]
***
(Penkhull Press, 4 April 2019, 282 pages, ebook, ARC via @Jancoledwards and voluntarily…
View original post 141 more words
Chat About Books Review on Chat About Books for In Her Defence
I am OVER THE MOON to be one of the lucky book bloggers kicking off Jan Edwards’s In Her Defence blog tour 🙂
Bunch Courtney is back and is as feisty as ever! She is an excellent character and it has been great to catch up with her again.
Set in Sussex in the month of May, in 1940, In Her Defence is book 2 in the Bunch Courtney series. It starts with Bunch meeting her pregnant sister, Dodo, for lunch on market day and witnessing the horrific murder of a Dutch girl. It’s obvious she has been poisoned, but by who? And why? Bunch is unable to just leave the investigation to the police. She can’t help but try to help figure things out, however often she is warned about interfering!
When an old school friend, Cecile, gets in touch saying that her father has been murdered in a…
View original post 419 more words
First stop on the tour is at the Indie Crime Scene page with an excerpt from In Her Defence : Bunch Courtney Investigates #2
Almost there – just two days until In Her Defence will be available to purchase/order (4th April 2019) and I am attempting to list all of the outlets with links for your ease of purchase!
If you spot one I have missed do let me know so that I can include it in the list 🙂
Digital sources: (tba)
Apple
Barnes and Noble Nook
Biblioteca
Kindle US / UK / AU
Kobo
Overdrive
Playster
Scribd
Tolino
24 Symbol
When you set a launch day come 6 months in advance it is a dim and distant promise – and then, suddenly, it is less that a week away!
In Her Defence launches on the 4th of April when the blog tour begins!
Paper and E books will be available!
The first signing event will be at City Central Library, Hanley, Stoke on Trent on Saturday 6th April. Not is about the time I begin to panic!
In advance is In Her Defence I have had a rather lovely review for Winter Downs from Alyson’s Reviews Here
“Altogether (Winter Downs) is a most enjoyable murder mystery, gentle but still with its fair share of blood and nasty criminals.” Alyson Read
Another early review – this time on Goodreads – from Steph Lawrence.
“With the setting in the Sussex countryside, I felt the heat of the unseasonably warm Spring.
The author’s descriptive writing took me into a world gone by. I loved the details of the war years. I loved the horsey side of things too.
Rose (Bunch) Courtney’s childhood home, Perringham House, has been taken over for the war effort. Bunch and her grandmother and staff are living in the Dower House. There is a hierarchy of diplomats, military and civilians.
Bunch and her sister Dodo witness a horrible death in the pub on a busy market day.
She receives news that an old friend’s father has died a similar horrible death, looks like poisoning. Could they be connected?
With further deaths the locals get twitchy. Bunch is again the amateur sleuth along with Chief Inspector Wright. Bunch keeps her eyes open and her ear to the ground, pursuing the locals for any gossip which may shed light on the goings on. There were plenty of twists and turns in this murder mystery.
The author’s attention to detail made for a great read, especially with the local dialect (I was reading in the accent in my head!)
I usually read fast-paced crime fiction set in the present day, so this was different for me. I really enjoyed it.
Thanks to the author for the review copy in which I give my honest opinion.”
My blog on tea and WW2 is now up on the Authors Electric site.
In writing the various Bunch Courtney books food and drink often seemed to play an important part. The discussions between Bunch and various characters sometimes take place over the traditional cup of tea and yet we all know that tea was rationed from July 1940 with each adult allowed just 2 oz per person per week.
There is a lot that I could say about tea during ww2. It is a treatise in itself, but one thing that came as a surprise, and yet was no surprise to me, was that in 1942 the UK government — close to defeat on all fronts and close to broke, its reserves drained as Atlantic convoys were hunted by U-boats— made the decision to buy up every available pound of tea from every country in the world. (With the obvious exception of Japan.) Continue reading “Writing In Her Defence: Tea research #tea #ww2 #rationing #bunchcourtney #amwriting #crime”
There is nothing quite so exciting as taking delivery of that first box of new books so there was much squeeeing in progress when the first batch of In Her Defence : Bunch Courtney Investigates 2 landed here at the weekend.
Here it is, all its glory, ready and waiting for the launch on 4th April.
Good news for those who prefer their fiction in digi form!
Winter Downs : Bunch Courtney Investigation 1 is now available in the following formats/platforms:
Apple
Barnes and Noble
Biblioteca
Kindle
Kobo
Nook
Overdrive
Playster
Scribd
Tolino
24 Symbol
“Winner of the Arnold Bennett Book Prize! Bunch Courtney stumbles upon the body of Jonathan Frampton in a woodland clearing. Is this a case of suicide, or is it murder? Bunch is determined to discover the truth but can she persuade the dour Chief Inspector Wright to take her seriously?”
Happy reading!
In Her Defence : Bunch Courtney Investigation 2 will be published April 2019!
more to follow!
Jan Edwards 
You must be logged in to post a comment.