It’s a new year so it must be time for a new book. I don’t really stick to specific genres, since I’ve written historical fiction, futuristic science fiction, family sagas and domestic noir. I am not really sure if my latest book, Bethulia, adds another genre of detective crime, or if, like everything else I’ve written, it is just a book about characters. There is some new ground I haven’t frolicked on before. Bethulia is purely contemporary, not an historical novel, but you might call it Jacobean. As in Jacobean tragedy. And for the first time (and probably last), I do feature a police detective as a principal character.

My previous books have often been classified as crime novels, but I have always considered them psychological mysteries rather than police procedurals. It’s an artificial distinction, I know, because any police procedural worth its ridiculously low Kindle price will be…