let’s talk about crime

I don’t think I’ve said much here about the original Pitkirtly novel, ‘Crime in the Community’. However, the Kindle version has now been made available for free on amazon.com so I think I owe it to the 7,000+ people who have downloaded it to talk about it a bit.

First of all, thank you very much if you have downloaded it. I hope you enoy reading it.

There were various reasons for publishing ‘Reunited in Death’, which is actually the second book in the series, first on Kindle, ahead of ‘Crime in the Community’,which had already been published on smashwords, but I suppose the one I gave most weight to was my personal preference for working things out for myself instead of knowing everything from the start. By ‘things’ in this case I mean background information about the characters. I prefer also to skim over the awkwardness of initial meetings where people say the wrong things and get the wrong impressions about each other. I must confess there is a certain amount  of this in the first few chapters of ‘Crime in the Community’. I hope it’s entertaining, but I have always feared it wouldn’t be.

A secondary reason for publishing ‘Reunited in Death’ first was that it is more like a traditional murder mystery. ‘Crime in the Community’ is more of a humorous thriller with mystery elements, although that makes it sound like a terrible mash-up of different genres. But at the same time the books fit together as a series, because they share the same sort of gentle humour and most of the same quirky characters, some of whom, at this early stage in the series, are bewildered and surprised that anything dangerous is happening in their quiet town. Later on they get more used to it!

I hope some of the people who have enjoyed reading ‘Crime in the Community’ will also like ‘Reunited in Death’ and that they will be waiting with breathless anticipation for ‘A Reformed Character’ which should be ready for publication in the autumn.