TWO of crimewriter Margaret Duffy?s most enduring sleuths are back in action in her latest novel Dead Trouble.
A smart, quietly spoken woman Margaret seems an unlikely person to delve into such a dastardly world as her characters inhabit.
But the author, who lives at Dousland on the edge of Dartmoor, finds crime a fascinating source for dramatic plots.
Dead Trouble is number eight in her series of crime novels featuring husband and wife team Ingrid Langley and Patrick Gillard. Ingrid is a novelist specialising in crime and Patrick has a police and army background and now works with MI5.
Margaret has placed them in an imaginary West Devon village called Lydtor ? somewhere between Brentor and Lydford.
Between them they pool some quite considerable resources when it comes to hunting down criminals.
?Plots come to me in all sorts of ways, often from reading a piece in a newspaper. For example, about religious effigies being stolen from tombs in Sulawesi. That started me thinking: What if they were killed whilst trying to add to their collection? This gave me the idea for Dead Trouble,? she says.
?Even when I have my first idea, I cannot just sit down at the keyboard and start writing. The process is a bit like incubating an egg; you sit on the idea for months before it hatches out. Even then, and when I have started the book, I do not always know where it will end. Sometimes new ideas will just come out of the wallpaper as I am writing.?
She says she knows the gist of where the book is going, but that doesn?t always stop it going off in the wrong direction.
?Sometimes I will write a complete chapter and bin it because I have written myself into a corner or the ideas are wrong.?
Margaret says although each book is complete in itself it is, in effect, an episode.
?When you have written something it is very much your baby, and you can resent criticism. But you must be ready to take advice from people in the market place, be they agents or publishers, and to keep working at it,? she says.
?My books are not who-dun-its in the strictest sense of the word. Crime is a loose description because there is a lot of intrigue and skull-duggery ? and there are always bodies.?
She started writing in 1980 and her first book was published in 1985. Her advice to would-be writers is to ?keep on keeping on?.
?Some people just want to write one book and it?s their baby. They don?t want anyone to criticise. But you have to cut, rewrite.
?Take advice from people that know what they are talking about because it all comes down to money.?
In her novels she holds to the ?romantic view? of good triumphing over evil.
?My crimes always get solved. It?s seeing the world through rose coloured spectacles. I like the idea of the police catching the crooks!?
l Dead Trouble is published by Allison and Busby and can be obtained at Bookstop in Tavistock.
ROGER MALONE