Almost on the point this week…

There are two new books out on Thursday. One is the one people will have been looking forward to, which is A Summer Affair, which is a book of summer short stories, and I’ll tell you more about it on Tuesday.

The other one is called ‘A Shot in the Dark’ and is written under my Eleanor Neville pen name, and set in the 1970s and the sequel to 'Sweeter than Honey' and part of my 'unlikeliest spy' series. It opens with a British diplomat and sometime spy coming back to his hotel room to find a naked girl in his bed.

Sounds unlikely? It isn’t because there’s this amazing book by Sir Roger Carrick called Diplomatic Anecdotage, and it’s available on Kindle, if you’re interested. To set the scene, he is a young diplomat in Bulgaria in the late 1960s when a keen young trade envoy comes to try to sell goods. He’s fresh out of university and somewhat naive and innocent, and Sir Roger is a duty officer.

On the first morning after the envoy arrives, our diplomat hero gets a visit from one very cross trade envoy who went back to his hotel room late at night to find a beautiful naked blonde in his bed. He angrily sends her away and complains to Roger about what were they thinking of. Which was, of course, blackmail and making him act as a double agent. I did say the trade envoy was young and naive, didn’t I? But he’d gone to a very good school and knew all the right people, and a fat lot of good that was doing him

The next morning our diplomat hero gets another visit from the trade envoy. This time it was a naked beautiful sultry brunette in his bed instead of a hot water bottle. He was even crosser.

The morning after that, the trade envoy’s back to complain about a tempestuous redhead. Roger reassures him that that’s that over and done with, and doesn’t smile till he’s gone.

The morning after that, he’s back and crosser still because it was a naked, doe-eyed boy this time! Roger does not record if the trade envoy carried on trying to do business in Bulgaria, but I think we can safely assume that his education had been broadened.

Add to that the night one of his colleagues' wives broke her pearl necklace when she was getting ready to go out. She gathered up all the pearls and put them in an envelope till she could get them restrung and then went out. The following morning the pearls were still in the envelope, but beautifully restrrung, because the Bulgarian Secret Service must have thought they’d broken them when they did one of their routine searches.

And finally, the night when his apartment was flooded. Our hero went to the fuse box, which was a jumble of wires, and while he tried to turn everything off, he relieved his fury and frustration by saying what he thought of the Bulgarian system in general and its plumbing in particular. A quarter of an hour later, a very efficient plumber turned up, who’d been told he was needed. So, even though they were technically enemies, there was humanity there.

All that happened, so compared to that, the plot of A Shot in the Dark is positively tame, and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing and researching it.

So here’s a picture of the cover to prompt you to look at it, and a link to it on Amazon and I’ll see you on Tuesday. https://www.amazon.co.uk/shot-dark-romantic-suspense-Romantic-ebook/dp/B0DYYZKH4Q/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2AQESHROOURNJ&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.LzbPHNFtnQxibJlJ3KNREg.Qv-By6CcBBhQHogmjvwnf37J2UvzYEeVAn7Y6jbQE4w&dib_tag=se&keywords=A+shot+in+the+dark.+Eleanor+Neville&qid=1754045921&sprefix=a+shot+in+the+dark.+eleanor+neville%2Caps%2C84&sr=8-1 As you can see, my hero got the tempestuous redhead!