Return to Fordhamton

In this second volume of the Fordhamton Trilogy things are still not going smoothly for the Trustees of Alan Price's will. What kind of memorial did he intend to represent 'Harmony, Industry and Co-operation'. Then the same three Councillors, the Mayor Michael Jackson, Peter Noone and Valerie Masters find themselves requested to deliver three envelopes in accordance with Arthur Brown's will. It seems the late Arthur Brown knew all about the affair between Peter and Val. What they did not expect was an insight to his life and loves; a strong and pungent pipe smoking tobacco, specialised homecare and a pensioner support group that was a cover for a monthly meeting where strippers were invited and non-PC language was more than tolerated. Into this comes Tim Rose, a management trainee at CCS Bank who is left in the countryside with no money and no map. In his attempts to get back to the training centre he is arrested as the local flasher, rounded up with a bunch of foul smelling tramps and arrested again as an accomplice of a young women who has stolen Bank and Credit Cards. Their stay at a hotel is interrupted by a Special Branch raid who have been tipped off that he is an international terrorist. Things do not get better when he succumbs to a fever and taken in by a local journalist. The Mayor is more concerned about whether Pie Sunday can go ahead now that Arthur Brown's house has been brought by an ethical company. Everything is saved by the Gryphon bat, nesting in its walls. But acting Detective Inspector Miles Davis sees conspiracies everywhere. Dave Edmunds, once of CCS Banking and now owner of the wine bar California Dreamin' has an answer to everything but it is the Mayor who becomes the local hero with his solution to end the police enquiries as they edge closer to an uncomfortable and unwelcome truth. John Barber was born in London at the height of the UK Post War baby boom. The Education Act of 1944 saw great changes in the way the nation was taught; the main one being that all children stayed at school until the age of 15 (later increased to 16). For the first time working class children were able to reach higher levels of academic study and the opportunity to gain further educational qualifications at University.This explosion in education brought forth a new aspirational middle class; others remained true to their working class roots. The author belongs somewhere between the two. Many of the author's main characters have their genesis in this educational revolution. Their dialogue though idiosyncratic can normally be understood but like all working class speech it is liberally sprinkled with strange boyhood phrases and a passing nod to cockney rhyming slang.John Barber's novels are set in fictional English towns where sexual intrigue and political in-fighting is rife beneath a pleasant, small town veneer of respectability.They fall within the cozy, traditional British detective sections of mystery fiction.He has been writing professionally since 1996 when he began to contribute articles to magazines on social and local history. His first published book in 2002 was a non-fiction work entitled The Camden Town Murder which investigated a famous murder mystery of 1907 and names the killer. This is still available in softback and as an ebook, although not available from SmashwordsJohn Barber had careers in Advertising, International Banking and the Wine Industry before becoming Town Centre Manager in his home town of Hertford. He is now retired and lives with his wife and two cats on an island in the middle of Hertford and spends his time between local community projects and writing further novels.