In Elliefant’s Graveyard, a rookie police officer’s journey home to honor her family leads her directly into a mystery when she begins to suspect a tragic accident is actually murder. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

Heather Prendergast arrived out of the blue. After writing four legal thrillers drawing on my background at the sharp end of the music industry, I wanted a new challenge and scoped out a dark psychological thriller. It was going to be one of those shiver-down-the-spine hair-on-end Scandi-noir style novels that were so much in vogue. But then the project was hijacked in the very first paragraph by what was intended as the most minor of incidental characters – a young woman police officer roped in to assist a grizzled detective investigating a suspicious death. This young, pretty, posh, ambitious PC leapt off the page and wrestled the entire darn book out of my hands – she wouldn’t, wouldn’t, wouldn’t take no for an answer. It was her book, she said. Like it or not like it. And so Heather Prendergast – Prendergast of The Yard – was born and refused to be stuffed back into the inkwell. And so inanity followed insanity. When searching for a suitable description for Baby Caspar – don’t worry, you’ll meet him – the word ‘plumpenormous’ sprang to mind. Having let the genie out of the bottle, the text demanded wordplay. More . . . more . . . more. Mind you, it took a greying of the hair to revise to the point where the wordplay melded seamlessly into the narrative.

I must admit, I was gobsmackered with the response. Jaded hacks who normally rushed off to wash their hair when I timidly asked them to cast an eye over a draft emailed me the next day wanting more. The constant refrain was, “What does Heather do next?” So I decided to find out and wrote two sequels. Goodness greatness me, what an ambitious young lady. It’s just a shame that her deductive abilities don’t measure up to her lofty ambitions.

The Prendergast of The Yard casebooks are a fun read. Almost without exception, the response is that the reader has never read anything like it. More than a few have compared Heather’s adventures to a modern-day Alice in Wonderland. Maybe. Maybe not. Because the bottom line is, Heather is Heather. Unique.

What was your favorite scene in this story?

Heather’s final standoff with a psychopathic murderer and her bungled attempt to free his hostage

What was the hardest part about writing a murder mystery story; where you constantly have to give just enough to keep the mystery alive until the big reveal?

It’s all in the plotting

What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?

There are two Prendergast of the Yard sequels ready to go

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