David Hodges's Blog: Murder On Audible - Posts Tagged "crime"

The latest novel in my Somerset Crime Series, featuring Sergeant Kate Lewis and husband/partner, Hayden, is now available for pre-order, with a publication date of 21 March 2024.

This one is a little different from my usual spooky plots and is very much a topical thriller, which is set in part on the wild coast of Pembrokeshire as well as on the misty Somerset Levels.

Kate and Hayden are taking a break from policing to re-charge their batteries, but crime is never very far away and Kate's marriage is tested to the full when, without Hayden's knowledge, she dives headlong into what turns out to be her most dangerous assignment yet. In the process she discovers to her cost that diamonds are not always a girl's best friend!

I hope my loyal readers will all enjoy the novel, which is the thirteenth in the series. I certainly enjoyed putting it together...

David Hodges

I bought a new , well, rather a second-hand, book called 'Masters of Villainy' by Cay Van Ash and Elizabeth Sax Rohmer, the other day. It is a biography on the author, Sax Rohmer, who wrote the famous crime series featuring the evil character Dr Fu Manchu. It is a fascinating account of the writer's career over the mid nineteen-hundreds, with all its ups and downs, and it took me right back to my youth in the fifties when, seeing me bored, my mother introduced me to Rohmer and his villainous character haunting London's old Chinatown. I was immediately entranced and the books were my inspiration for wanting to be a professional writer. It took me more than forty years to fulfill that ambition, which was interrupted by thirty years service in the police, but eventually I got there after so many struggles and setbacks along the way that almost put me off. Now with a total of around 20 published novels behind me, including a 13 book crime series, set on the Somerset Levels, I look back with great fondness on those exciting days as an eleven year old child sharing in the adventures of Dr Fu Manchu, and it is my fervent wish as I approach my eightieth year, that other readers will share in the adventures of my heroine, Detective Sergeant Kate, who has become as real to me as Dr Fu Manchu apparently was to the late Sax Rohmer. Without a doubt, imagination is one of the greatest gifts any reader can possess. It can be a driver for life itself.
Happy reading...
David Hodges (Author of On The Levels Crime Series)