That’s almost two weeks since Finding Sophie hit the Amazon bookshelves and early signs are looking promising.

Thank you to all who bought the ebook or paperback, or both. Please feel free to comment about the book or any of the books in the JP Associates series on my website.

Alan

Never mind Finding Sophie, what about finding the sun? The last two days here in Leith have been drookit indeed, with all the lights in the house burning brightly and the central-heating back to its winter setting.

A person might be as well curling-up on their settee and reading a good book!

Dear Readers,
Finding Sophie, book 4 in the JP Associates series, is available now on Amazon Kindle and in paperback. For those who had problems downloading book 3 on their kindles, that problem has been rectified for book 3 and book 4. Now there should be no problem downloading any of the four books in the series.
I hope you all enjoy the book.
Thank you to the reader who has given book 4 its first five-star review!

With only a few pages of editing to do before the final proof and check-over, Finding Sophie, the fourth book in the JP Associates series should be on the shelves by late March. Thank you to all my readers for your patience and continued support.

I’d bet any money that JP Assosiates thought they’d seen the back of me when my ME struck a couple of weeks ago. Well they haven’t. I’m back guys! Okay maybe not with a vengeance, more of a whimper actually, but back nevertheless.
So what have you intrepid sleuths been up to in my absense?

As my birthplace, well near enough, Leith provides the inspiration and rich setting for my novels that are based around a fictitious private detective agency, JP Associates.

Leith is a buzzing port linked in the early twentieth century to become part of Edinburgh.

It represents a microcosm of society, with a personality that has been shaped by the past and a diverse community of characters and enterprises who will shape its future.

The JP Associates series is about the goings-on of a place that could be any place, of people with their warmth, their traumas and their joys.

If you were going to open a detective agency, wouldn’t you want it to be slap bang in the centre of it all?

Do you remember that last time Bob took Tod to a Burns supper at his club? That was the Saturday and they were so hungover on the Sunday, they were hardly fit enough to interview Tracey for the job of secretary, and that was the following Monday.

Anyway, she got the job and they were glad of it, well some of the time at least.

It’s our bard’s birthday the day. Robert Burns, born 25th January 1759 in Ayrshire, is famed the world oer for his romantic ballads and philosophical works.

For me, he was mair than that. He took me at the age o fifteen fae reading comics tae reading literature and it was literature written in Scots, my ane language.

Before Tod retired he had tae watch aw the schools he worked wie bring out the tartan and the bagpipes and the haggis on the 25th and for ain day only the bairns language was legitimised. Then the next day the Scots language books were put awa and it was back tae the auld Standard English.

Nae wonder many o they bairns struggled wie their literacy. Their hale lives were spelled out in Scots, grammar and aw, but that wisne allowed in school. Tod used tae think they’d hae been as well leaving the bairns at the gate.

Cauld enough to take the balls of a brass monkey right enough. Cars and pavements covered in that freezing frost that falls slowly over everything. Not even the salt air from the Firth can dispel it.
But in the Kirkgate Lidl will already be open and folk will be filling their bags with croissants and the like.
Greggs door is well and truly open and welcoming and the waft of saugage-roll and mini doughtnuts fill the air.
Round the corner in Great Junction Street on the other hand the door to JP Associates remains firmly closed, and may not open till Tracey arrives at twelve thirty. But then the boys were warned not to over stay their welcome in the Starbank Inn last night. But once the Reverend Callum Mackie gets talking, there is no shutting him up.