Silbury 1966

It’s 1966. We are in Silbury, a small town in the west of England with a broad High Street, a major independent school, five banks, eleven public houses, and a police station led by Inspector Fatima Dieng. It ought to be a sleepy place, and mostly it is. Yet somehow almost every month some new and significant problem arises that Fatima has to deal with. In April there is a flood of counterfeit currency in the town. In May the daughter of a prominent politician is found dead at Silbury College. During the summer the Longbarrow Tea Rooms are burnt almost to the ground. In October a prominent scientist at a nearby hush-hush government research facility goes missing. In November the Mistress of the Silbury Hunt is shot dead. And in December Fatima herself is the victim of a robbery, whilst she is away on an outing with her two best friends. In resolving these various crimes, though not always bringing them to full resolution, Fatima shows resourcefulness, humanity and humour. Together with her fellow police officers, and aided by close friends, she tackles not only crime but also ingrained greed, privilege and racism in a society that is undergoing fundamental changes. And she makes a powerful enemy, who uses every opportunity to undermine her.

Three years later, in 1969, Silbury remains fundamentally the same as it was: a small town in the west of England with a broad High Street, a major independent school, five banks, eleven public houses, and a police station led by Inspector Fatima Dieng. But, as we first discovered in Silbury 1966, this small town stubbornly refuses to live up to its sleepy reputation. Aspects of the completion and sale of houses on a new affluent estate raise suspicions among Fatima and her friends. But do they actually warrant official police attention? There is a spate of vandalism in the town, raising the ire of some prominent citizens, as well as highlighting problems faced by young people, and deeper social issues. In the course of what was supposed to be a pleasant outing to Sarum racecourse, Fatima and her friends are witness to two suspicious deaths, with significant repercussions back in Silbury. As Fatima’s daughter enters her final year at Silbury Grammar School, the Headmistress is rushed to Forest Hospital with a mystery illness, a suspicious package is discovered in the school’s staffroom, and two of its leading teachers are the subject of homophobic abuse. And towards the end of the year, Fatima is the subject of multiple attacks, both physically and through the press, and she almost loses her life. Is there a common thread behind this strange series of events?

It's 1974. Detective Inspector Fatima Dieng has been in Shechester, the largest city in the northwest of England, for some time. She is feeling very frustrated. If it’s not the job, it’s the family. Things had been so much easier in that sleepy little West Country town where she, her husband, Adama, and their daughter, Hadidjatou, used to live, and where she had charge of a small, relatively smoothly functioning police station. Life had indeed been better in Silbury. Now her daughter was at university, and her husband just moped around the house all day without a job, without friends, and resentful of the antisocial hours that Fatima, no longer in uniform, has to keep. At work, in fact, things are really no better. The Shechester and Pepford Criminal Investigation Department has been split into a number of teams, each competing with the others for points awarded on successful conclusion of cases, leading to both the prospect of career advancement and the pick of juicier, higher profile cases in the future. Fatima’s team is the most racially diverse in all of Shechester and Pepford CID, not to mention the most talented and innovative, as one would expect, given Fatima’s own superior leadership capabilities. They are called upon to investigate some extremely complex cases, many of them having some connection to security threats posed by civil strife in Northern Ireland spilling over into many parts of the rest of the United Queendom. But, much like one of the local football teams, Shechester United, the team languishes at the bottom of the CID league table, largely due to running interference from Fatima’s superior officers and so-called colleagues in other teams. It all comes to a point where her very own future as a police officer looks to be in jeopardy. This is the third book in the series about the world of Inspector Fatima Dieng. The others were Silbury 1966 and Silbury 1969.

Max Maartinesz is a history professor. He is single and lives alone. Make of that what you will, is what he would say. His life is by and large ordered and very comfortable. But he always has the distinct impression that something is missing. Perhaps a bit of spice? Then, one day, in the week between Christmas and the New Year, whilst he is taking a break in London, he chances on a travel advertisement in Private Eye: Propitious Peregrinations ®. What follows is an adventure adding so much spice to his otherwise mundane life that he is left wondering if he has made the right choice in, for once, following an impulse, rather than a carefully crafted plan. What do you think?

One of the most important pieces of advice given to those in United Nations service approaching retirement is to have a plan. Make sure you are ready to engage in organised, fulfilling activity. Research suggests that those who do not follow this advice tend to die earlier, often within three years of the end of their careers. Then what happens when hundreds of people are found to have died very shortly after retirement? Looking into this question falls to a diverse group of international civil servants, and to the colourful team at Brown Hat Investigations.

Lillian Selby is a librarian. She works at the Manchester Central Library. She lives alone in a small maisonette in Rusholme, which has been her home since she was an undergraduate at university. Her life is quiet, ordered, mostly solitary, quite mundane. Gillian Lewis is another personality entirely, albeit she and Lillian do have much in common. But back to Lillian. Since almost forever, she has been pretty much completely sedentary and now feels the need finally to travel, having put by a little nest egg, and being at a moment in her life where, as they say, a change might be as good as a rest. It is not, as Lillian finds herself having to fill the utterly unfamiliar shoes of Gillian, facing hostile environments at every turn. Well, to be fair, some good things happen too, you know, like friendship, and even love. As Tom Lehrer famously wrote in his 1951 song Lobachevsky: Who deserves the credit? And who deserves the blame? In this instance, it is Propitious Peregrinations ® that must, in Lillian's view, assume full responsibility. This account of her (mis)adventures is her effort to warn all who may be tempted to follow in her own faltering footsteps. Beware!

Max Maartinesz is a history professor. He is single and lives alone. Make of that what you will, is what he would say. His life is by and large ordered and very comfortable. But he always has the distinct impression that something is missing. Perhaps a bit of spice? Lillian Selby is a librarian. She works at the Manchester Central Library. She lives alone in a small maisonnette in Rusholme, which has been her home since she was an undergraduate at university. Her life is quiet, ordered, mostly solitary, quite mundane. Then they both go on the most hair-raising, life-threatening adventures, through the maleficent offices of Propitious Peregrinations ®. Although their separate experiences occur a quarter of a century apart, they learn that they have more in common than one might think. For instance, each took the trouble to set down in writing, for the edification of the general public, an account of their tribulations. Each also formed life altering connections that were equally all too abruptly severed. Now Max and Lillian proceed together on a common quest to tie up loose ends left hanging from their previous sojourns. Dare we hope that, this time, they might experience truly propitious peregrinations? Frankly, what are the odds?