Anyone looking at my bookshelves would conclude that two different people live in this house and have agreed never to discuss it. One shelf is full of tidy village murders. The other is full of books that make me check the front door twice before bed. Both shelves are mine, and between them they have taught me most of what I know about the job.

Reviews reach an independent author like postcards reach a house that has been quiet for a while: one at a time, unannounced, and read far more often than they strictly deserve. A few have begun to appear for Fatal Turn of the Tide. I have read each of them more times than I will admit to here, and it seemed more useful to share what they say than to glow about them privately.

Fatal Turn of the Tide has been out for a few days now, and there's a calm that settles in once a launch has happened rather than being something you're still bracing for. The pre-orders have gone out, and Brightcombe's third murder is finally somebody else's problem to solve. Mine has already moved on to the fourth.

For every book before this one, my process was the same. I finished the edits, formatted the file, and hit publish within a week of getting the green light from my editors. It felt efficient. Looking back, I think it was mostly nerves wearing an efficient costume: I wanted the book out into the world before I had time to talk myself into changing something else about it.

A friend of mine once told me she reads the last page of a mystery before she buys it, just to check that the ending won't annoy her. I was horrified when she said this. I am still a little horrified. And yet I understood her completely, because we have all closed a book and felt cheated by its final twenty pages, even when the first three hundred were wonderful.