HELLO FROM DAVID HODGES

I think most professional novelists will agree that writing can be a hard, lonely business that draws on every ounce of concentration, determination and resilience the author possesses. It can lead to frustration, brain fog, sleepless nights, eye-strain, back ache and exhaustion, but in the end, when that book you have spent months and months writing, amending, kicking round the room and eventually hating is finally published, there is nothing like the sense of joy and satisfaction that hits you all in one go — and that feeling is the same each time it happens.

I know that when Joffe released ten previously published novels in my Somerset Levels crime series as an anthology last month, entitled the Detective Kate Hamblin Mysteries, I could hardly believe that this amounted to just half the crime novels — sixteen of them in the same series — I had written over thirty-two years as a crime novelist, following my thirty years as a serving police officer.

Now, as we approach July, I am looking forward to seeing Book 17 in the Joffe series being published and I feel the same excited anticipation I have always felt on such occasions, after twelve long months producing another episode in the hectic, unpredictable lives of Detective Kate and her eccentric police officer husband, Hayden.

The novel, Conspiracy On The Levels, sees Kate really up against it this time when she is accused of causing a horrific non-stop road accident in which an elderly woman is knocked down as she is crossing the road and suffers serious injuries. As the victim hovers on the edge of life and death and Kate’s job, reputation and even her liberty are on course to be forfeited, the embattled detective is forced to investigate the crime herself and to try and find out who has framed her and why. But she up against a clever, ruthless villain, who knows all the angles and won’t be satisfied until he destroys her completely.

So there it is, and I sincerely hope you, my loyal readers, enjoy Kate’s next challenge. I certainly enjoyed putting my auburn-haired heroine on the spot yet again, and I feel sure she will rise to the occasion, as she always does . . .

Oh, and by the way, if you’re wondering what sort of novels I read, try those of Lee Child. Not exactly detective novels, they are nevertheless an excellent, exciting read, particularly the early ones, and I would certainly recommend one of his first, One Shot.