Books

The story behind Murder at the Herald

When my son, Sam, was eleven he wrote a murder mystery novel for a competition at school. The heroine was a wonderful character called Polynesia Henman; an eleven-year-old who was clever, resourceful and not afraid to be different … and of course she solves the murder!

The book was left, forgotten in a cupboard, as Sam grew up, but nearly twenty years later I came across it during a clear out. Sam’s wife, Alice, volunteered to edit and punctuate the original and she designed a cover and gave us all a copy for Christmas.

Rereading the story after so many years, I began to wonder what Polynesia – by this time a woman of thirty – would be up to now and how her life would have panned out. Murder at the Herald is the result of my pondering.