I write fiction that is accessible, visual and crosses a range of subject matter.
In Night of the Parakeet, a child investigates the mystery of his young brother’s death with repercussions that will affect his adult life . In The Summerhouse, three young people form a golden circle that inevitably dissolves as one of the characters discovers herself. In Sundog, a childhood bond formed in a remote Kent farmhouse in the 1950s, haunts the narrator’s later life. In Broadway Market, a novella, a group of young people go to ground in a derelict but grand house on an East London market street, one of them finding refuge from mental ill health. In Tales from Crete, Classical Greek myths form a background to contemporary short stories.
Locations include England, Greece, Brazil, California, Hong Kong and China. The historical settings move from the Vikings to the current day and into the future.
The Sun Dog Due for publication on Amazon 2018
Two children play an intensely charged game in a remote farmhouse on the Kent marshes. Johnnie, the middle-class educated boy, left there by his pleasure-loving mother, and Laura the wild card, unconstrained in her actions. It is the 1950s.
It is from this point in time that Johnny and Laura’s lives remain intertwined, despite his wish to put Laura behind him as he develops a career in science.
What is the significance of the one-eyed totemic figure they found as children that day out on the marsh? And what influence over events does it still exert? Who were its owners and how do their stories, down from the Viking period, mirror events of the present?
From England to California to Hong Kong, to his eventual retreat to the original Kent farmhouse, Johnnie’s link with Laura, and ultimate recognition of her significance in his life, awaits him – as does the totemic figure . . .
Night of the Parakeet Connect to buy from Amazon
A child falls to his death.
A tragic accident or something more sinister?
Caught up in the mystery of his young brother’s death, nine-year old Charlie turns detective. Boyhood games of investigation, fired by the visit of a police inspector one winter’s evening, lead him into an ever more disturbing labyrinth of discoveries. The shadow of suspicion falls upon his own respectable Victorian family, setting up reverberations that will haunt him into adult life.
On the brink of manhood, still driven by a compulsion to find the truth about his brother’s death, he joins his profiteer uncle in Brazil. From the heady excesses of rubber-boom town Manaus, to his uncle’s decaying sugar plantation, he is exposed to the corrupt roots of his family’s wealth, and balked at every turn in his underlying quest.
It is only on his return to England that a disturbing new possibility emerges into the light . . .
Broadway Market Available from Amazon from September 2017
Broadway Market: now a hipster street in London’s East End . . . but this is 1980, a very different era, and the street lies lost and abandoned.
Three young people go to ground in a grand but crumbling house on the market.
Street-wise Harry, quick as a flash, his collectables drawn from every nook and cranny of their grimy environment.
Chlo, with her impeccable courtesy, geisha-like, impenetrable.
Sylvie, the guest, fleeing her own ghosts.
Peter, the visitor, enchanted by the world of the house, which offers him a refuge from his demons as his mental state deteriorates.
What is the magnetism this house exerts, standing high above the derelict streets? And why is it deserted overnight, left empty to the winds and rain . . .
The Summerhouse. (published 1988 Century Hutchinson)
‘Three. We three. Three is a special number. Three sisters, three brothers, a rose between two thorns.Three’s company. Three’s a crowd. Three wishes.’
Three young people live in a borrowed house filled with beautiful objects, close to the heath at Hampstead, London. The two men are lovers. Simon, the sardonic observer, dark and remote, with silver bangles on his wrists. Tony, the beautiful young man, the one with no past, with his wry, wicked tongue. And Marianne, the ‘waif’ girl, deserted by her husband and adopted by them. But, is she such a waif . . . ?
Through a year of seasons, from autumn to autumn, they live as a golden trio, a charmed circle, safe from the world outside. Until the day a man enters Marianne’s life with a power strong enough to make her break free of the circle, without looking back at the sadness she is leaving behind . . .
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Tales from Crete (work in progress)
A collection of contemporary short stories related to Greek myths.
My Aphrodite
A band of children emerge, seemingly from nowhere, onto a Cretan quayside as dusk falls. Why are they there? And are they all children?
One of them catches the eye of the narrator, a dealer in antiquities. What is it about this chance encounter that leads him to pursue a vision of his own down the unlit web of ancient alleyways behind the quay? And what awaits him there . . .
Judithmeadows 