When my father left the air force at the end of World War II with a bit of money in his pocket, he spent some of it on a complete set of the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. I still have it, well worn, with some of the 24 spines barely legible any more. It was my introduction to the idea of research in my early youth. Just to prove its date, one interesting entry reads “Hitler, Adolf (1889 — )”

So, seeming to change the subject entirely…

My novel Shadows, while being a domestic noir novel like all my others, also contains an element of the supernatural. A very small element: I was not writing “Occult Horror”, as it was listed on Amazon at first. I grew up with Dennis Wheatley as well as the Encyclopaedia Britannica, but I don’t really want to mimic him…