Last June I had the immense thrill of winning the Best Novel award at the Arthur Ellis yearly banquet for my Victorian historical called TRUMPETS SOUND NO MORE. It had received good reviews--particularly one from Joan Barfoot on the webpage for The London Free Press. What a sensation it is to know your efforts have been recognized and that the research you did has impressed a critical reader like Barfoot, a prize-winning novelist in her own right. My research for TRUMPETS led me to England in the fall of 08 where I walked the streets in London, the same ones charted in my book as the locale for my detective's home, on Cursitor Street, and views of the street where the murder took place. An eery feeling grabbed hold of me as I walked with my camera, shooting doors and entrance ways that had figured so strongly in my plot. There is no doubt one can find remnants of the past so readily in London. So please, if you have read or are planning to read TRUMPETS as your next prize- winning detective novel, take a look at the pictures I have posted. One shows me on Cursitor Street standing in front of Detective Owen Endersby's London address. The other are shots taken on Doughty Street where the fictional murder took place and where, as well, there is one of the houses Charles Dickens lived in during the 1840s. The black bust is of the famous writer himself. I am working on a sequel to TRUMPETS and will soon discuss its publication but be alerted, it will be a dark story of workhouses and London's criminal world during the early years of Queen Victoria's reign.....JON REDFERN
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