Betty Rowlands

Authoress of Murder & Mystery

The Melissa Craig Mysteries

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"People often ask me if Melissa is my alter ego and I have to admit that we have quite a lot in common. Like me, when she was in her forties she moved from London into the country. Her Gloucestershire village is similar to the one I lived in for over thirty years and like me she soon became actively involved in village life.

"Also, she is a crime writer, although why this should be so I shall never be able to explain. My agent suggested that I try my hand at a whodunnit; when I sat down to write Murder at Hawthorn Cottage, Melissa just seemed to walk into my head, complete with her past history, her problems, her strengths and weaknesses, her son Simon, her eccentric neighbour Iris Ash and agent Joe Martin. DCI Ken Harris, who features in many of the titles in the series, appeared on the scene a little later.

"Like Kipling's elephant's child, we both have an insatiable curiosity, although I'm thankful that I've never been in the kind of scary situations in which Melissa finds herself. Her nerves are much stronger than mine; just writing the description of that hair-raising crawl along a narrow ledge overlooking a deep gorge in Murder on the Clifftops gave me goose bumps!"

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