Q&A WITH FRANCES LLOYD

Ahead of the much-anticipated release of THE EDEN PARK KILLER, the next enthralling murder mystery in the Detective Inspector Jack Dawes series, we caught up with Frances Lloyd to ask her about the inspiration for the book and what to expect next.

How did you come up with the idea for the series?

I was holidaying on a Greek island when a large party of tourists came into the taverna where I was having supper. They sat around the table next to mine, and soon my writer’s imagination began to conjure up back stories for each of them. I decided that the English professor was plotting to kill his American wife and that the couple sitting next to them — a Metropolitan police detective and his wife — had been sent there under cover to stop it happening. When I got home, I wrote The Greek Island Killer, the first book in the DI Jack Dawes series.

Tell us about the setting?

Jack and Corrie Dawes (Corridors?) live and work in fictional Kings Richington, an affluent, self-satisfied town nestling beside a quiet stretch of the Thames. The name is an amalgamation of Kingston, Richmond and Teddington — suburbs of London.

What can readers expect from Detective Inspector Jack Dawes in Book 11?

DI Jack Dawes is baffled when his wife Corrie finds a body in the back of her catering van with a vegetable knife in his back. The dead man is Corrie’s first husband, and Jack begins to worry. To avoid a conflict of interest, a DI from another division is brought in as Senior Investigative Officer and immediately decides that Corrie is the killer. Jack begins a stealthy investigation to clear her name, but more deaths occur before he is finally able to get to the truth.

What was the most interesting thing you had to research whilst writing?

You research lots of things as a crime writer — things that a normal, law-abiding citizen would avoid! If the authorities ever impound my laptop, I’ll have some awkward questions to answer!

1)How to buy a pump-action shotgun online (I stopped short of handing over the money!)

2)The most effective way to import a cache of arms and drugs from Eastern Europe without getting caught.

3) How much antifreeze (ethylene-glycol) you’d need to fatally poison someone.

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