A MESSAGE FROM ALINE TEMPLETON

The Galloway series

Galloway is a tranquil corner of Scotland where amid forests, lochs, sea cliffs and low hills, there are small towns that make you feel as if time has stopped. I had occasion to go there to an event in Wigtown, Scotland’s Book Town, just when I was contemplating a series.

It was at the height of the foot-and-mouth epidemic; farmers in despair, businesses going bankrupt, a testing time, not least for any local police officer obliged to enforce the cruel killings.  Especially if you were also a farmer’s wife.

I could see her already, tall, athletic-looking, tough and humorous, a very ordinary woman, with a husband, children and elderly parents, working in what is even now to some extent a man’s world. So, Marjory Fleming was born into a family and community so vivid that it took on a life of its own, that seemed to carry on even when I wasn’t there. Starting a new book, I always felt I had to ask, like an occasional visitor, ‘Well, what have you been doing since I saw you last?’

So, a rural idyll?  But violent deaths happen here for the reasons they always have from time immemorial: jealousy, greed, lust, revenge, hatred, fear.  This is Marjory’s professional life, and what drives her is her passion both for justice and the difficult, demanding and often dangerous job.