Detective Jeff Lincoln and I are on a break! And I don’t mean a few days away by the sea. (If you’ve read the books, you’ll know Lincoln doesn’t really do holidays.)  No, I mean, we have consciously uncoupled for a bit, while Book 5, A Strange and Murderous Air, is awaiting publication in November, and before I start Book 6.

What am I up to? I’m returning to a novel I started about twelve years ago, when my career in local government had come to an end rather sooner than I was expecting, and I decided I’d do what I’d always wanted to do – spend my time writing. The novel was about four women – is about four women – though they are now a bit older than they were when I started writing it. Since they’re that much older, I need to adjust the things that happen to them, change the world around them and think a bit harder about the plot.

Libby and Roland have settled down in a roses-round-the-door cottage in Dorset, after decades of moving round the world for Roland’s job. Jan, happily single (though not without her admirers) runs a small farm near the Wiltshire-Dorset border. Paula and her husband, Mike, are stuck in a rut in town not far away, and the fourth woman, Amy? Well, she’s the odd one out, the rebellious one who caused all sorts of disruption when the four women were girls together at school.

Jan and Libby are trying to organise a class reunion, much to Paula’s disgust – but do they invite Amy? And if they invite her, will she turn up?

Still early days with this one. I wrote a lot of it all those years ago, but much of it is now redundant. But – and this is a bit BUT – I don’t THINK there’ll be any murders in it.

Like I said, DI Jeff Lincoln and I are on a break…