Simon Bognor takes a holiday from the Board of Trade to visit the village of Herring St George and observe the ancient custom of the Popinjay Clout -- a colorful mix of food, drink and a bit of longbow shooting. All is going well until the VAT inspector is discovered pinned to a tree by arrows.
A character in this novel is Sir Nimrod Herring, a name Heald found on a headstone in the Civil War cemetery in Richmond Virginia but which many critics thought impossibly far-fetched. This is a sort of pastiche of the traditional
Golden Age whodunnit except that the traditional English village has been updated to the second half of the
twentieth century - with disastrous results.
Tim Heald (b. 1944) is a journalist and author of mysteries. Born in Dorchester, England, he studied modern history at Oxford before becoming a reporter and columnist for the"Sunday Times". He began writing novels in the early 1970s, starting with "Unbecoming Habits" (1973), which introduced Simon Bognor, a defiantly lazy investigator for the British Board of Trade. Heald followed Bognor through nine more novels, including "Murder at Moose Jaw" (1981) and "Business Unusual"(1989) before taking a two-decade break from the series, which returned in 2011 with "Death in the Opening Chapter".
Heald has further distinguished himself with official biographies of Prince Philip and Princess Margaret, as well as accounts of sporting heroes like cricket legends Denis Compton and Brian Johnston. He is also an experienced public speaker. Heald's forthcoming novel, "Yet Another Death in Venice" (2014), is the latest in the Bognor chronicles.
John Lee has spent 30 years guiding lives and relationships through addiction, recovery, emotional ruin, rage, grief, and desperation, and into new strength, hope, functionality and fulfillment. He wrote the bestseller The Flying Boy, as well as twenty other books, and he has been featured on Oprah, 20/20, Barbara Walter's The View, CNN, PBS, and NPR. He has been interviewed by Newsweek, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and dozens of other national magazines and radio talk shows. John earned his master's degree at the University of Alabama, where he taught English and American Studies. At the University of Texas, he worked on his doctorate and taught Religious Studies and Humanities at Austin Community College. He is founder and former director of the Austin Men's Center where he ran men's groups and sessions for individuals and couples. Along with poet Robert Bly and others, John became a recognized leader in the Men's Movement and an early pioneer in the field of recovery and addictions―he has keynoted hundreds of clinical conferences around the world. He lives in Austin, Texas.
