Your favourite amateur detective, Andorra Pett, returns in a new adventure.
I have finished the first draft of the latest Andorra Pett escapade. My editor will be seeing it soon, if it all goes well, I intend to publish it at the end of the year.
I’m amazed to see where Andorra has gone; from her creation in response to a bet and her first appearance in a short story. As well as the three novels, she has also been part of two anthologies and now, in Andorra Pett takes a Break, she has her fourth full-length mystery. This one is set in yet another part of the solar system.
This time, Andorra is on a new development in transport. The Solar Breeze is the cruise ship of the future. Powered by the Centi-drive plus, which allows travel at one per cent of light speed, it can go from the Sun to the Kuiper Belt in around twenty-four days. The plan is for the rich and famous to be taken on a ninety-day round trip, with visits to all the planets and the Sun.
Andorra is a guest on the maiden voyage, in return for giving a lecture on her experiences in mining the rings of Saturn. This voyage is a short one, from Earth, around the Sun via Venus and back to Earth. Onboard are the great and the good. Naturally, there’s also a whole load of trouble. Once again, she will need all her famous ingenuity, plus a helping of luck and a few laughs, to get out of this one alive.
I found that I needed to do a lot of research to write this story, far more than I was expecting.
In writing about the far future, I can take a few liberties, such as with faster than light travel and planetary engineering, although the basic science must always be sound.
As the Andorra Pett universe is more contemporary, I must make sure that everything I get her to do is at least possible under the laws of science as we currently understand them. Things like the travel time between planets (which are as accurate as I can make them) and the bits of a spaceship that do various things are all based on what we know, adapted for a new purpose. And of course, the social background to the story has to be close to how we are now. I’ve used environmental concerns to drive the narrative this time.
I hope that I have constructed a setting, in the Solar Breeze, that is relatable and would be achievable if our technology was slightly more advanced than it is now, without becoming all Star Trek.
The good news, for all her fans, is that this will not be her last adventure. There was a time when I thought that it might be, the last thing I wanted to do was let her become a boring series. I would rather stop than go through the motions with formulaic plots to keep sales, all the time realising that her glory days were behind her. Andorra Pett goes Lunar is in development and who knows what might happen after that. If I can’t think of any more stories for her, perhaps her great-granddaughter will get to carry on the sleuthing tradition, in some far-flung future?
Once I get the edited manuscript back, I’ll be looking for beta readers, if you’d like an advance copy, please let me know. You don’t need to have read the others to get into this one.
You can start Andorra’s adventures with this story.
How far is far enough? Andorra needs to get away from her ex, but is Saturn taking it a step too far?
When Andorra’s life turns upside down, she decides on a career change. Running a diner on a mining station orbiting Saturn. It seemed like a good idea at the time…
With her best friend Cy in tow, Andorra reckons it’s the best thing for them both. A chance to start again where nobody knows them.
Trouble is, there’s a secret hidden in the café. Before they have a chance to get settled, there’s a queue of dubious characters trying to find it.
While learning to bake and get used to life in space, Andorra has a murderer to catch!
Before they strike again…
“Agatha Raisin meets Miss Marple, in Space!”
“a tale that has everything – humour, suspense, a strong but struggling heroine, a fantastic sci-fi setting, and a truly universal story.”
All my publications can be found on my Amazon page, at
I’d love to get your comments, please leave them below. While you’re here, why not take a look around? There are some freebies and lots more content, about me, my writing and everything else that I do. You can join my newsletter for a free novella and more news by clicking this link.
