The inspiration behind DI Andy Horton mystery THE ROYAL HOTEL MURDERS

The idea for the January set THE ROYAL HOTEL MURDERS (no. 4 in the series of currently 17) started not with an hotel but with a wharf on the eastern side of Portsmouth. 

Kendalls Wharf fronts on to Langstone Harbour and is renamed in the novel as Oldham's Wharf. The wharf manager at Kendalls was extremely helpful during my research and didn't mind at all me having a body there. I decided, however, to change the name of the wharf as fictional characters are named working there and I certainly didn't want anyone thinking I was describing them!

The novel begins though in an hotel, yes you've guessed it The Royal Hotel where Perry Jackson and his team are filming a new TV series about wrecks in the Solent. Shortly after they’ve checked in, Jackson receives a series of threatening phone calls telling him to watch his back. Horton thinks it’s a publicity stunt to promote the new TV show.

Meanwhile at the Rest Haven Nursing Home in Southsea, Mrs Kingsway says she’s been assaulted by an intruder, but there’s no sign of a break-in. The staff thinks she’s lost her marbles, but her son wants action from the police.

As if that isn't enough Horton is troubled by a mother's distressed insistence that her son’s fatal car accident on Christmas Eve was not an accident.

When a man in diving gear is found dead in Oldham’s Wharf with several of his fingers missing, the pressure is on and Horton finds himself deep in a web of intrigue, deception and corruption that stretches back into the past. Can he, aided by Sergeant Cantelli, find his way back and stop a killer?

It’s difficult to explain where all the threads of this crime novel came from (or indeed any of my crime novels come to that) but I start with an idea usually a location – the wharf in this instance – and begin to ask myself questions: how does it feature in this crime novel? Is a body found there? If so whose? How did it get there? Why was he/she killed? What other pressing cases does Horton have to investigate? Are they linked or are they separate?

Then there is the matter of Horton’s personal and professional life. Horton is still reeling from the startling discovery in THE HORSEA MARINA MURDERS (3) that the disappearance of his mother, Jennifer, thirty years ago was not as he thought, a single mother abandoning her child because she didn’t want a kid in tow, but could be linked to an international criminal.

The death of an elderly lady in the same nursing home where the resident claimed to have been assaulted throws up more revelations and a surprising link to Jennifer's disappearance. Andy Horton needs to consider how important this is to him, should he pursue his own personal investigation into Jennifer's disappearance or leave it in the past?  I'll leave you discover that in the book!

See where all the DI Andy Horton Solent Murder Mysteries are set.

(Please note THE ROYAL HOTEL MURDERS was formerly published as Dead Man's Wharf).

"Great protagonist and lots of odd turns and fantastic ending. I hope to read many more books from this author." Terry G.