Eddie Flynn #4

If you've been waiting for the appearance of the fourth P.I. Eddie Flynn case file you'll be glad to know that we've finally gained access to the back room at Chase Street and pulled out another confidential folder from his high-security storage area. The result is Slow Light, published 25th November.

It's been a while since the last Flynn novel but as my email list readers will know I've taken a break to write a stand-alone crime novel The Watching, which came out in May this year (2018). The break, and concentration on both writing and a thousand other things, including a necessary renovation of my website, also explains why the site has been a little quiet the last year or so.

Now, the Eddie Flynn series seems to be selling very steadily, which tells me that readers are enjoying it, so why divert to something else?

The answer is that I started writing crime because I enjoy that, and what I enjoy (the type of story and narrative style I like writing) does spread over quite a spectrum and the only reason that Eddie Flynn has become the mainstay, apart from my having a key to Chase Street, was that when I wrote the first story back in 2012 it was selected by Moth Publishing as a winner in their bi-annual Northern Crime competition and was published with my signature on an options contract to deliver more of the same.

The deal fell through - Moth are a small independent and found that they needed to be frugal with their ongoing commitments to further titles - but the second Flynn story was mostly written and the momentum kind of kept me going right through into the third book. But at that point I took a breather and reached for my "pending" files, which contain more than a few stories waiting to see light of day, not all of them involving detectives, and out came The Watching. By necessity the book needed plenty of research and then validation by a friendly lawyer, and the gap before I was ready to start on my next in the Flynn series stretched more than I intended.

But Slow Light is a short and simple novel and we've made up some of the time and here it is. I hope you like it.

And the next book... that's another Flynn, as yet untitled. We're aiming for Autumn 2019, though the schedule for this one might be a little shaky since the story is a little longer and more involved than Slow Light but all here at House On The Hill will do our best. After that it's another break and another stand-alone, a crime thriller that's been lurking in the queue for at least two or three years, getting meaner with each delay. That one will be brought out in cuffs in 2020. That's my plan, anyway.


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Until next time, thanks for reading,


Michael