The setting and idea for THE OYSTER QUAYS MURDERS

A wet August night and Inspector Andy Horton is returning from London to Portsmouth when police cars on blue lights race past him on the motorway. Nothing unusual in that but as Horton heads for the small yacht on which he lives he sees the police vehicles pull up outside Portsmouth's Historic Dockyard. His curiosity gets the better of him and he stops to investigate.  Lying face down and sprawled out in Number One Dock is the lifeless body of naval historian Dr Douglas Spalding.

The inspiration for this DI Andy Horton mystery came while on a visit to Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.  This is what I saw in Number One dock and it immediately looked like a body under that tarpaulin.

Number One dock houses the black and white Monitor M33, one of only two British warships to survive from the Great War, which has now been restored and is open to the public.  But when I wrote THE OYSTER QUAYS MURDERS (formerly titled Undercurrent) Number One dock was sealed off with no public access and seemingly no way of a body getting down there.  The sight of the tarpaulin in the corner stimulated the little grey cells, as Poirot would have said, and sent my imagination flying.

Who is it under that tarpaulin?  How did he get there? Why is he dead? How did he die? And so began the twisted tale of THE OYSTER QUAYS MURDERS.

Superintendent Uckfield is adamant that Spalding took his own life. But Horton’s not so sure. Then another body is found in similar circumstances in the cockpit of a boat moored at Oyster Quays.

Angry at his boss’s inaction, Horton takes matters into his own hands.

My grateful thanks to Rowannah Martin-Cottee and Heather Johnson of the National Museum of the Royal Navy Portsmouth who helped me with the research for this novel and for answering my numerous questions.