Yorkshire Writers' Lunch

That damned wind! It never stops. Everything creaks, windows, doors, roof timbers. But beyond that cacophony there’s something else, a guttural sound borne on the endless wind from the forest above. Can I ignore that call, pull the eiderdown over my head and wait for sleep?  I know that’s impossible so I shiver out of bed into my clothes, into my coat, into my boots. My fingers find difficulty in striking the match, in lighting and adjusting the wick of the lantern. Gloves bring blessed relief from the bitter cold. The moon is not yet to be seen. The snow is deep, each step up to my knees, sweat dripping down inside my woollen shirt. Moving through the blackness, the lamp casts strange and troubling shadows, I try to listen beyond the sound of the permanently swaying pines. That call, the one I’ve never heard until this night, is there uphill, to my left. Under the shelter of the trees, the snow is less deep, but my steps are still slow, my body’s reluctance to mov

Two weeks ago we had a minor family drama when our youngest, Oliver, (7), broke his wrist.   After a visit to the operating theatre and a night in our wonderful local hospital, Oliver was the proud bearer of a plaster cast, and apparently none the worst for his accident. As I sat by his hospital bed, I mentally ticked off all the plans we had for the next few weeks which would now have to change – a dance exam, a drum exam, a birthday party at a climbing wall, another at a swimming pool, a rounders match. The list went on and on. I would have to choose my moment to run Oliver through this catalogue of disappointments.  It had been an ordinary day in half term. We were visiting a local adventure playground with one of Oliver’s friends, we had a picnic lunch, and I was thinking it would soon be time to head home. Then suddenly, (and following a particularly enthusiastic shove from his older brother), Oliver fell from the zip wire.  And everything changed. In an ins

This week the Writers’ Lunch grills author Dave Rigby about his latest detective thriller, Shoreline. Harry Vos, your amateur detective is a rounded character with lots of life experience. How did you get to know him? click here for details His name was my starting point. I saw it in a newspaper and thought it was a good mixture of a very English sounding first name and a Flemish / Dutch sounding surname. Because I’ve holidayed in the Flemish area of Belgium quite a bit, I decided to base him there. I thought it would be good to have a man in his sixties as the central character, retired (like me) and not a professional crime investigator. That way I don’t have to learn about police procedural stuff. I can just allow Harry to make it up as he goes along (as I do!). I had a strong idea of his character from the start (unlike the plot which unrolled as things developed). Basically I envisaged a solid man but with a number of strong character traits. He’s dogged, stubborn, gets a