James Henry – ‘The Winter Visitor’

Join us for a THRILLER NIGHT with acclaimed crime writer James Henry, where he’ll be talking about his latest Essex-based novel ‘The Winter Visitor’.

Essex, February 1991. The weather is bitingly cold. Everyone would rather be somewhere warmer, which is why it’s a big surprise when a wanted drug smuggler, Bruce Hopkins, risks a return to his old haunts in Colchester after a decade long exile on the Costa del Sol. Lured back by a letter from the wife Hopkins left behind, no one is more surprised than him when he finds himself abducted and stripped bare only to be sent to a watery grave in the boot of a stolen Ford Sierra. The police wonder if it could be retaliation by a Spanish gang, sending a warning to their English counterparts.

DS Daniel Kenton has teamed up with the unorthodox DS Brazier to investigate a crime wave which takes in not only the murder of an expat dope smuggler, but a sophisticated arson attack on a Norman church and the unexpected suicide of an ageing florist. Could there possibly be a thread that connects them?

Written with the humour and period detail that have become his trademark, and set in the badlands of his beloved Essex, The Winter Visitor is James Henry at his inimitable best.