There is an email in my inbox right now from someone I have never met who is extremely keen to help me with my marketing. They found my book on Amazon, they say. They loved it. They have some great ideas for a book trailer. They would be happy to jump on a call at my earliest convenience.

There is something slightly irrational about the appeal of the amateur sleuth, and I think most readers who love the genre know it, in the same way you know that a biscuit at eleven o'clock is not strictly necessary and have one anyway. Logically, if a murder needs solving, you want a trained investigator. Someone with access to forensic databases and the legal authority to compel answers and a warrant to search the premises without having to invent an excuse about returning a borrowed casserole dish. The professional detective has all of this. And yet, time after time, the reader chooses the retired schoolteacher. The curious neighbour. The village librarian with a tendency to ask one too many questions at the wrong moment.

There is a particular kind of reader who will tell you, with some satisfaction, that they knew something was wrong from the very first page. Not who did it, not what exactly happened, but that the world of the novel was tilted, that something beneath the surface was waiting to surface. They cannot always point to what gave it away. That is the point.

There is a question I get asked, now that The Forgotten Corpse is out in the world alongside the Paula Langford books: how do you write both?

I've always had a soft spot for the cosy mystery. There's something deeply satisfying about a story where the world is contained, the puzzle is elegant, and justice is served neatly by the final chapter. Having written a few cosies myself, the Paula Langford series included, I know that world well. I know how to pace it, how to plant a clue without telegraphing it, how to make a village feel like a living community rather than a painted backdrop. It's a craft I've come to love, and I don't intend to leave it behind.