What’s in Mrs. Hale’s Receipts for the Million?
4356. Common Carriers. – The owners of a steamboat are responsible to shippers of goods as common carriers. Common carriers, if they make a wrong delivery, are responsible for any loss.
Shetland Noir
I don’t plan to travel by steamboat, but I am off on a grand adventure that, hopefully, I won’t have to check my baggage.
Last summer I noticed a tweet by Ann Cleeves, the author of the Vera Standhope and the Shetland series. She announced an early bird ticket to Shetland Noir. Curious, I checked out the URL and discovered that this gathering of the top UK mystery writers and beyond was taking place June 15th, 2023 in Lerwick. I signed up and immediately got a call from my credit union. What did I just do?
I have always wanted to go to Shetland for its WWII history and the Shetland Bus which appears in The Jøssing Affair. Watching Shetland with Jimmy Perez certainly soothed my dream somewhat, but now I’m actually going. Shetland Noir! It will be epic with some of UK’s most famous mystery and crime authors and I’m not just attending, I’m a panelist. I’m so excited and honored to be on a panel named, Travel in Time on June 1, p. 13 in the program. I do plan to visit the Shetland Bus Museum and Ann Cleeves has arranged a tour of the main island for all the authors. How cool is that? I’ll be posting on Instagram and Facebook.
My latest Novel
I don’t know why it’s taken so long to get back here to post. Maybe I could blame it on a bout with COVID in August that led to another health issue (I’m just fine now) or maybe because I’ve had my head down wrapping up my latest historical thriller set in Norway. I just finished it two days ago and will send it off to capable hands. It’s title is The Brisling Code. I have a working cover but it’s not ready for the public yet.
This novel is set in Bergen in 1942, the beginning of the worst year in the entire occupation. Bergen’s part in the war was new territory for me, so it has been a wonderful journey researching and chatting with top Norwegian historians and experts of the town and time period. My secret weapon has been 99 year old Berit Vassali, who lived near the U Boat base in Laksevåg during the occupation. The stories she’s told me.
Here is the working back copy for my new novel, the prequel to The Jøssing Affair:
An experienced intelligence agent at 22, Tore Haugland faces certain danger when he accepts an assignment in occupied Norway knowing that his predecessor was killed by the Gestapo only a week before. The dying agent left a mysterious message in his interruption code that London calls the “Brisling Code.” London wants Haugland to find out what it means and to gather information on the expansion of the U boat base in Bergen. Haugland is sent to work at drafting office in a shipyard. His mission is jeopardized when a ruthless SS officer, Hans Becker, with his own secrets, is alerted to his presence by a traitor at the Verks. Becker will do anything to find him. If Haugland can’t discover the meaning of the Brisling Code in time, it could cost him his life and expose the members of the local resistance he works with. If he does, it could hurt the people he has grown to care about. But what if the message was written down wrong?
I plan to launch it at Village Books in mid-September, but there’s still work to do on it. The meantime, I’m off to a grand adventure in Shetland and Norway.
Har det bra!