I think I had been living in St Margaret’s Bay about a year or so before I realised that there was something very special about the Bay – that maybe it required more from me than just endless days of swimming and enjoying myself.

My husband and I had moved there from a town further down the coast, and we had found ourselves living on the White Cliff’s of Dover – literally! The house built into the sloping cliff, and the garden extending up towards the cliff edge. The view is the one that you can see on my book cover for The Hellfire Detective. The garden used to be land owned by Peter Ustinov; he owned the blockhouse he had been stationed in at some point in WW2, buying the cliff-edge eyrie for a weekend retreat.  At some point he sold some of the garden – we were shown his flamboyant, lilac-inked signature in the deeds – and the house was built that later became our home.

Down in the bay, where I swam every day from May (if I was lucky) to October (if I was feeling brave!), there was also the set of cottages which were initially rented and then owned by Noël Coward. I would sit at Rob’s Café – a lovely, friendly place, which I believe is still there – and drink copious amounts of coffee between my swims, enjoy the odd bacon butty and consider how beautiful, yet undeniably dramatic the location was.

The desire to write had always been with me, but I had never had the opportunity to dedicate the time it needed. Now, constantly covered in sea salt, wearing my rather ragged ‘sea’ clothes over my swimming costume, surrounded by friendly people who were regulars at the Café, I felt the inspiration for a story taking hold. The characters Noël, Peter, David Niven and Ian Fleming came marching into view – men who all had real-life roles in the war, and connections to the area. The missing element was my ‘hero’ who would hold it all together. And that’s when Chief Inspector Alex Sutherland began to take form.

More of that another time…