The Maltese Herring
Page 23
‘Have we met before?’ asked the old lady beside me.
‘A couple of years ago,’ I said.
‘Are you famous?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Didn’t think so,’ she said with a sigh. ‘They never sit me next to anyone interesting.’
‘The Principal’s secretary likes my books,’ I said. ‘That’s why I get seated at High Table.’
She nodded sympathetically. ‘I’m going to be eighty-nine next year,’ she said. ‘Would you like to see some pictures of my grandchildren?’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I’d like that very much.’
AUTHOR’S NOTE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
None of my characters (as they say) resembles a real person in any way whatsoever. If you don’t believe me, check out a few real people. Similarly, my West Wittering grows less and less like the real West Wittering with every book. It has no priory, nor has it ever had one, though the Bishops of Chichester had a country house there for a while. Likewise, Sidlesham (a nice enough place) never had an abbey of any sort. There is consequently no abbey preservation committee. The descriptions of the dunes, the marshes and rosebeds are, however, as accurate as I can possibly make them. Hell, you deserve that much.
Horrocks Greengrocers (who sometimes stock my books) and Apuldram Roses (who do guarantee their plants just as I describe) are also real and both are recommended for their excellent service. Just say that I sent you.
Hadleyburg, strictly speaking, does not exist, though fans of Mark Twain will have immediately noted references to his short story ‘The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg’. Similarly, I cannot deny making one or two nods in the direction of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, an undoubted masterpiece of detective fiction. When I do stuff like that it’s called homage, not plagiarism, which is something other people do.
For all of the aforementioned reasons, and many more, I remain grateful to Susie Dunlop, Kelly Smith and all at Allison & Busby for continuing to publish this series and to David Wardle for his excellent artwork that may have suckered you into buying the book. (Well done, David Wardle, I say.) In view of what the book says about agents, it may surprise you that I have found any willing to associate with me. They are, however, more tolerant than you might imagine – certainly more tolerant than you might assume from the agent who narrates some of this story. Unless he has taken exception to any of Elsie’s activities between my writing this and your reading it, I am delighted to be represented by the talented and immensely popular Mr David Headley at DHH, to whom I must, again, express my thanks for his help with this book and others. And finally, I must thank my wife, Ann, whom I love dearly and who would assure you that, when I depict writers as being vague, irritating and impractical, I am perhaps, after all, not so far from unflinching realism as I may have claimed.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
L. C. TYLER has won awards for his writing, including a CWA Dagger and the Last Laugh Award (twice) for the best comic crime novel of the year. He has also twice been shortlisted in the US for an Edgar Allan Poe Award. He is a former chair of the Crime Writers’ Association and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, of which he was Chief Executive for twelve years prior to becoming a full-time writer. L. C. Tyler has lived all over the world, but most recently in London and Sussex.
lctyler.com
@lenctyler
By L. C. Tyler
The Herring Seller’s Apprentice
Ten Little Herrings
The Herring in the Library
Herring on the Nile
Crooked Herring
Cat Among the Herrings
Herring in the Smoke
The Maltese Herring
COPYRIGHT
Allison & Busby Limited
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London W1F 8AN
allisonandbusby.com
First published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 2019.
This ebook edition published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 2019.
Copyright © 2019 by L. C. TYLER
The moral right of the author is hereby asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All characters and events in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978–0–7490–2450–5