The Dan Foster Mysteries follow the adventures of Bow Street Runner Dan Foster from the 1790s. It’s a series that depends on a steady supply of crimes, and though I’m free to invent what I like, it’s important that those crimes are historically plausible. Many crimes no longer exist – returning from transportation, for example, or highway robbery. Where they do still exist, methods have changed: burglars don’t often have to remove shutters from windows before they can break in, and arsonists don’t rely on a tinderbox to get a fire going. That’s why many of the cases mentioned in the Dan Foster Mysteries are based on actual investigations carried out by the Bow Street Runners. In The Chiff-Chaff Club Murders: A Dan Foster Mystery Novella   (free to newsletter subscribers; see below ) I’ve used two cases. The first is based on the prosecution of thirty-eight year old Thomas Cannon and thirty-two year old James Coddington in 1808, which depended on the laws against sodomy – laws w...

  Seven Days – Twenty One Blogs! Death Makes No Distinction is on a blog tour this week. The novel is the third in the Dan Foster Mystery series, which follows the fortunes and cases of Bow Street Runner and amateur pugilist, Dan Foster. When Dan’s old rival, John Townsend, requests Dan’s help to investigate the murder of a former mistress of the Prince of Wales, Dan is ordered to abandon the case he was working on – the murder of a beggar woman, found savagely murdered in the outhouse of a London tavern. Dan won’t let the death of an unknown woman go unavenged, and is determined to get to the bottom of both murders. But as his enquiries take him into both the richest and the foulest places in London, and Townsend’s real reason for requesting his help gradually becomes clear, Dan is forced to face a shocking new reality when the people he loves are targeted by a shadowy and merciless adversary… Find out more by joining the Death Makes No Distinction Blog ...