The Keeper of Secrets - 1
No, this historical mystery isn't by my husband, Edward Marston - it really is all my own work!
Tobias Campion came into existence when Mike Ashley, editor of all those wonderful anthologies of crime short stories, asked me to write a Regency story. I can't remember whether he actually stipulated that not one single bosom must heave, but somehow it became a guideline.
Much as I would have liked to write a pseudo-Georgette Heyer confection set in Bath or Brighton, the Rev Tobias Campion insisted that he should have an unfashionable parish somewhere in the Midlands. You can read his first outing in The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits (Constable, 2005).
While I was researching for the story, I came to realise how very few people enjoyed the glittering life we associate with the Regency, and I have built on this information in the novel.
