News

Faukon Abbey Chronicle – Page 3

author

The Saddleworth Moor Inquest Returns Open Verdict

The intriguing story we have previously reported concerning a body, without any identification, which was found on Saddleworth Moor, in December 2015, and identified after a worldwide hunt, continues. (See our previous story here)

It took police more than a year to find out who he was. The inquest in the case was held March 14. The pathologist said the most likely cause of death was strychnine poisoning. Police ruled out any suspicious circumstances, which would indicate that the man now identified as Mr. Lytton, had travelled all the way from Lahore, Pakistan, via London to Manchester, walked up the hill to the Moor to commit suicide.

The coroner said he could not be sure of Mr. Lytton’s “intention”. “Whilst accepting he died of his own hand, the only appropriate conclusion I can reach is an open conclusion,” the coroner said. He added that a series of “fundamental questions remain unanswered”. For example, why did Mr Lytton travel all the way to Saddleworth Moor to commit suicide. He had no known links to the area. He had paid cash for a five-night stay in a hotel in London, and yet he travelled north after one night, during which he went out for dinner with an old friend. The morning after meeting his friend, he takes a train to Manchester, vanishes for an hour when he gets there, takes a taxi to a pub and gets directions to Saddleworth Moor where he’s found dead morning after.

Find out more about this true life (murder???) mystery  – The BBC has reported it here and here. The Guardian reports more about it here and here.

 

 

 

The Good Riddance Project

author

It was a dark and stormy night – and I set out to write a chapter or two for the third Faukon Abbey mystery, except, it didn’t turn out that way. The result is “The Good Riddance Project” A Project Management Mystery. It’s a novella, and if you ever have done a project, then this one is for you. It’s a tongue-in-cheek mystery about a project manager who has issues with his wife…. 🙂 It’s now available on amazon for 99cents.

About good books and wine, or is it whine?

author

Getting philosophical here…

It is said that good books are like wine, more you enjoy them better you appreciate them, the classics be it wine or books are good. The thing I’m concerned about now has to do with both wine and books and I do enjoy both.
When I was growing up, I went to the library, couldn’t afford to buy books. The smaller libraries I went to, their main distinction was fiction – non-fiction. So I browsed through the fiction shelves, pulled out a book here and there. I wasn’t concerned what genre it was. I read it, liked it more often than not, and returned it.
When I got older, and it came to wine, I didn’t really have any particular idea about it. I liked red wine with food, white wine too, especially with fish, and rose well, that was good with just about anything in the summer. But that was it. I wasn’t very knowledgeable about the grapes involved, and frankly I didn’t care. If the Chateau X wine tasted good, that’s what I bought the next time. But if the wine I liked had more Cabernet than Merlot, or if the rose was made with Grenache or Syrah, it didn’t really matter to me. I cared about the taste, and if the wine went well with the purpose, food or just being a nice “chatty” wine to enjoy in a mellow summer evening.

Now, thanks to Amazon and books, we have this micromanagement of genres. I understand it’s impossible to browse among the shelves like I used to but I’m not sure if pigeonholing a book in a every kind of a genre is good for the reader or the author. Take mysteries, a genre I thought I knew something about. I’ve read thousands of mysteries over the years. I like the puzzle, the use of my “little gray cells” to try to solve the murder. But it’s a bit annoying to  find, that in the top 20 category Mystery/British Detectives, the number one book is “Murder Out of Turn” which is set entirely in New York. Louise Penny’s books (number 4 and 15) are set in Quebec in Canada and Lee Childs’ two books (16 and 20) set mostly in the USA. Mind you, I’m not saying anything about these books. Personally, I really like Louise Penny’s books, the way she writes about Quebec city in the middle of the winter makes me want to move there. And Lee Child’s books are good too. But, these books do NOT have British Detectives.


Same thing with wine. Nowadays, if I want to find a wine which would be a nice chatty wine to go with some shrimp, aioli, and bread, I have to first figure out which grape I want in order to find the right shelf in the store! I know I like cabernet, don’t like Syrah, I like Chardonnay, if it’s not oaked. BUT the same thing that has been going on with books is happening with wines too, pigeonholing. Why do I have to, in order to find a wine or a book I like, figure out IF I like a particular grape more than another one, why do I even need to know the grapes used? If I like Louise Penny, who is very much Canadian and her books are set there, why would I look for her books among British Detectives? And why do I want to figure out that in order to find Agatha Christie’s “And then there was none” I have to check out category called Historical British & Irish Literature only to find it next to Ken Follet’s “Fall of Giants”! Does this make sense to you? It doesn’t make sense to me. How am I supposed to find a good puzzling mystery if I don’t know the name of the author?

The trouble is, I don’t really have a good alternative to offer, but I’m sure there must be a few literature loving engineers around who can figure this one out. When it comes to wine, I just stick with a good Rioja with steak, Sancerre with fish, and a dry rose from just about anywhere to sit and drink while munching on shrimp and aioli in the summer. And I really do not care which grapes are involved in any one of those!

Faukon Abbey Chronicle – Page 3

author

The body on the Saddleworth Moor has finally been identified

The intriguing story about a body found on Saddleworth Moor, in December 2015, made worldwide news, including in here Faukon Abbey. There were similarities with Eric Warner’s case as we reported here.

The man found dead on Saddleworth Moor was found fully clothed, lying prone on the ground. The post-mortem examination showed that he had died of strychnine poisoning. The BBC and other news organizations reported about him in June 2016 after the police had run out of leads. The only thing the police had was the small medicine bottle which contained strychnine, and the fact that the man had had a titanium plate in his leg which was manufactured in Pakistan.

Finally someone reported that a man with striking likeness, had travelled from Lahore, Pakistan to Heathrow in London. The DNA analysis confirmed that the dead man was David Lytton, who had been living in Pakistan for 10 years before returning to the UK. He was apparently a bit of a loner.

The mystery however remains; why did he fly from Lahore to London and day later take a train from London to Manchester, then an hour after arriving to Manchester, he walks into a pub in Greenfield near the Dovestone Peak National Park, and asks for directions how to get to the top of the mountain. He walks about two miles.

The police now believe he took his own life. But the biggest question remains, why did he chose to travel nearly 200 miles across England, to Saddleworth? He has no obvious connection with the area. Why go to all that trouble, if you want to kill yourself?

The inquest will take place on 14th of March.

For more about this intriguing story – check out BBC story in June here and the follow-up here

Missing Alibi – next Faukon Abbey Mystery coming soon!

author

The latest Faukon Abbey Mystery titled “Missing Alibi”missing-alibi-blood is now with the editors, and will hopefully hit Amazon in early December both as ebook and as paperback. A hardcover is also planned.

In Missing Alibi, a successful author of romance, erotica and mysteries, is found dead in the bottom of the stairs in Elm House. Was it an accident or murder? DI Greene and DC Ford have their work cut out for them, chasing suspects from Vancouver in Canada to Stockholm, Sweden, with Jimmy Carter from the Abbey Chronicle chasing them. Was it something she wrote? Or was it something else?

 

Writing mysteries is fun!

author

Writing mysteries is actually fun, and one gets to talk with a lot of people about strange things. Today I got a call from a service manager with Jaguar Land Rover dealer here. I had left him a message yesterday. And he was just a tad curious about my question – you see I needed to know about a particular part of a Land Rover engine (and I won’t tell you which part as it all will be part of my new book).

He was initially rather concerned about my inquiry since it appeared that I was hell-bent on basically getting his best advice as to how to kill someone! I ensured him that oooh nooo, I wasn’t actually planning to murder anybody, I was a mystery writer. After we cleared that part up, we had a good and as strange as it may sound, we laughed a lot . And he ended up wishing me good look and good fortune with my book so that I can get back to him and buy a Land Rover or even a Jag I wish!